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Lizette Lozano

Professor Rowley

Engl 115 12:30

21 November 2017

Television - Childrens Biggest Influencer

This paper is going to be about the affect television shows have on childrens idea of how

to act as a perfect being based on your gender and how it is they are supposed to behave.

Television sets are not a fairly new concept it has been around for some time now and it is now

easily accessible to more people whether they have a high or low income it doesnt matter

anymore because television sets are easy to buy anywhere. It is very common nowadays for

children to just in front of a screen four hours with nothing else to do but to just watch every

possible episode there is. Parents allow this because it is the easiest way to keep their child

entertain without having to be hovering over them with a toy dangling in front of them hoping it

would grasp their attention so that they can play with the toy for the next twenty minutes.

Especially when guests come over they are in awe of the perfect kid that is just sitting there

peacefully, unlike their kid who runs around in circles in the living room screaming as loud as

possible.

Little do the parents know that watching all these kid friendly shows put them at risk for

future stereotypes in how people should act and behave based on whether they are female or

male. Or it can result in the child trying to act like the characters from the screen trying to be

touch and the main hero if he is a boy or a sweet and calm girl who likes to help others if she is a

female. because television sets are easy to buy anywhere.

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Gender stereotypes have been going on for as long as anyone can remember, society has

been working on improving them and it has worked, to a certain extent. For television shows

they are generally male leads with female sidekicks, similar to the working husband and helpful

wife. When television was created and many shows came about it was majority male leads and

male characters, in a study conducted for television shows they came to the conclusion that,

ranging from 1930 to the mid-1990s in regard to gender, they found that females represented

on average of 16.4% of all characters. In addition, they found the number of female characters

declined sharply from the 1930s until the early 1960s (Martin, Rebecca 2017). That means

83.6% of the television screen was all males female characters didnt dramatically incline up

until 1999 where only 58% of the characters were male, another sample was completed in 2005

and it still concluded male characters were more common than female characters across

programs, but particularly so in programs rated TV-Y or TV-Y7 (Martin, 2107). Now those

conclusions are towards are young ones who we stick in front of the screen so they can keep

quiet and according to many researchers children are more susceptible to gender stereotypes at a

very early age.

My Point to the ratio of male and female characters is that these are adopted at a very

young age to be the ideal man and woman of society. For boys, it is very direct who they need to

be, it is in majority child shows such as: Super Why, or Sid The Science Kid even Tom the

Builder these all show strong intelligent young males who can all fix problems with either help

of his teammates or just their intelligence alone. As they grow older watching these shows they

want to be strong characters holding good jobs such as a firefighter. To society it is the perfect

man one who is capable of caring for himself and his family and one who can be in difficult

situations and manages to solve them on their own. For women, it is different because there are
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very few television shows that have strong female roles. That only leaves the women to be a

team player to the male captain or the helpful and sweet one who is desperate need of saving. It

is hard for females to see the same traits and less likely to develop autonomy, initiative, and

industriousness is they rarely see those traits modeled (Witt, Susan 2000). In these cases, they

believe that is how they should behave in society, that is the ideal woman in most cases now

especially a couple years ago. But now that society is changing it makes it harder for them to

learn the ideal standard type of women for society if only men are shown with the traits that

currently society is fighting for leaving many girls confused on how they are supposed to act if

society and television are telling them two different things; this begins to apply more pressure on

the girl to quickly learn how to be perfect to society. Recently some new shows have appeared

with female as lead roles but many have advised to take caution and to take it slow, for some

right now there is improvement but to other researches have argued that there are still thousands

of traditional portrayals out there to be viewed, and that the magnitude of change has been

overstated (Martin, 2017). If we look closely at these shows we begin to notice that these

female leads have a lot of male co-stars who help the lead in every situation possible leaving her

back to the woman who needs help. With these television shows being watched at such young

impressionable age these children begin to take in characteristics of what they need to have to be

perfect citizen to society.

The amount of television watched by children in the vast amounts can impact the children

in such a tremendous way especially when it comes to how they behave. As mentioned before it

is incredible how much children watch television; Susan Witt has stated that Nielsen Media

Research has found that by the time children are 16 years old, they have spent more time

watching television than going to school (Witt, 2000). Given that children roughly start school
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at 5 or 6 years of age that is a very long time to give television the chance to imprint on a childs

mind more than our education can. For behavior traits between male and female are two different

sets of lists; television programming emphasizes male characters strength, performance and

skill; for women, it focusses on attractiveness and desirability (Witt, 2000). It is as basic as that

which allows and teaches are children that these are the traits you need to have to be perfect. It

can be a lot of pressure for some more than others as they may not have always been so naturally

strong or be naturally want to immediately grow up, find a husband and raise a family. Having

these pressures cause stress on the being and with the stress tends to bring out aggression in

some people; now aggression is definitely not a trait that people find attractive in either male or

female.

Trying to be perfect makes you imperfect then how can anyone be the perfect citizen

for society? One group of researches came up with a study to potentially view if there was a

better solution for kids to have a positive change in a childs behavior and less gender

stereotypical. At first it started with a simple experiment reducing the amount of television

children watch can reduce aggression among 9-year olds. (Christakis, Dimitri A., 2013). It also

lowered the potential risk factor of bullying other students in elementary school; this was a result

because with less television there was less bad guys to kill reducing the aggression type of

mentality in a child. In this study over the course of twelve months researches asked parents to

keep track of what they are watching and to try and put more educational shows that show how

to solve problems not with violence but with words, or shows that were like trying to crack a

puzzle; such as the show Super Why. This had good results which ended in significant

improvements in the overall score at six months (Christakis, 2013).

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Trying to raise a child to not conform with all of gender stereotypes is difficult, being the

child and trying to be the perfect person in societys eyes isnt easy either. There are always

some things you can do such as explain to your child why situations are the way they are and that

it does not always have to be dont that way. Or change what kind of shows he watches so that

they arent so gender stereotypical and they dont have to feel so pressured into being the macho

man or the heart-warming daughter; instead they can form their own opinions about how they

want to be for society, not how society wants to them to be. Do not let television influence you

or your child about how a boy or a girl should act according to societys standards.
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Works Cited

Christakis, Dimitri A., et al. Modifying Media Content for Preschool Children: a

Randomized Controlled Trial. (Report). Pediatrics, vol. 131, no. 3, 2013, pp. 4318.

Martin, Rebecca. Gender and Emotion Stereotypes in Childrens Television. Journal of

Broadcasting &Amp; Electronic Media, vol. 61, no. 3, 2017, pp. 499517.

Witt, Susan. The Influence of Television on Children's Gender Role Socialization.

Childhood Education, vol. 76, no. 5, 2000, pp. 322324.