Writing with Semantic Argument or Statistics Essay

Writing with Semantic Argument or Statistics - Essay Example Never mind the content, TV cartoons are the cheaper alternative to hiring a baby-sitter and is the safest way to keep even a hyperactive toddler distracted. Or so parents generally believed. But this rather cavalier attitude parents have towards their very young children watching TV cartoons – of any and all sorts – have pediatric experts worried; studies have shown that TV cartoons may be to blame about the increasingly antisocial tendencies of children even at a young age, attitudes that they may carry with them into adulthood. Could TV cartoons really be as bad an influence? One way to determine the influence of TV cartoons is to look at the statistics. TV sets may be the most common feature among American households; about 99% percent of homes are not without their own TV sets as television programming are the cheapest and most convenient way to be entertained and informed. The average child watches up to two hours of TV cartoons each day (Center for Communication and Social Policy, University of California, Santa Barbara [UCSB], 1998) and some even as much as 28 hours of cartoons each week (Beresin, n.d.). But what is more alarming about this fact is not the quantity of TV time but the quality of the program. Studies revealed that shows that target the very young audiences contain twice as many violent acts as other programs; furthermore, Saturday morning cartoons have been recorded to contain as much as 20 to 25 violent incidents per hour compared to 3 to 5 violent incidents found in prime-time TV (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 1995). Not all TV cartoons feature this rather stunning amount of violence. A recent study conducted to determine the effects of violence in media on children’s anti-social behavior was conducted by Drs. Christakis and Zimmerman in 2007. They classified TV programs that target the young audiences into three categories: violent programming,