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Talking With TV: A Guide to Starting Dialogue With Youth
Channel
3: Video 24 Hours A Day
Television is everywhere—in our homes, our schools, our workplace
and portable enough to be in our hands! We have organized
our schedules, our relationships
and even our furniture around television. In less than 50 years, television
has gained a prominence in our lives unmatched by any other medium.
Our children spend more time tuned into TV than they spend at school or with
friends and family. In fact, they spend more time watching TV than doing
anything else except sleeping!
Close-Up: The Power Is On
A look at the numbers shows just how much
channel surfing is going on.
- The television is on about seven hours per day
in the average home. (Gerbner, 1994)
- The average American teen spends 23 hours a week
watching television. (American Psychological
Association, 1993)
- By age 18, a teenager will have seen 350,000 commercials.
(Davies, 1993)
Wide Angle: A Collage of Views
Parents and others who live or work with
young people cannot help but worry about the variety
of messages children receive from TV.
- Prime-time television contains roughly three sexual
acts per hour, including deep kissing and petting.
(Greenberg, 1993 )
- By age 16, the average American teenager will
have viewed 200,000 acts of media violence, 33,000
of which were murders. (Carton, 1992)
- One out of every five scenes with premarital sex
involves teenagers. Forty-two percent of characters
condone it while only 25 percent criticize it. (Lichter,
1995)
- In scenes that dealt with sex between unmarried
partners, less than 9 percent conclude that having
sex is inappropriate for any reason. Two-thirds of
the scenes endorse the desirability of sexual relations.
(Lichter, 1995)
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