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Social aggression common in children’s television

A majority of the most popular children’s television programs featured some type of social aggression, according to study results.

“Just because a program does not contain physical violence doesn't mean that program is harmless,” study researcher Nicole Martins, PhD, assistant professor of communications at Indiana University, told Healio.com. “As we can see, many programs still contain behaviors that are anti-social in nature. I would recommend that clinicians reinforce or make patients aware of the guidelines set the AAP, which states no TV for kids under 2, and less than 4 hours per day for older children.”

 

Nicole Martins

Martins and colleague Barbara J. Wilson, PhD, professor of communications and vice provost of academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, analyzed the portrayal of social aggression in 50 television programs rated the most popular among children aged 2 to 11 years by Nielsen Media Research. The researchers selected three episodes from each program to ensure that the results were characteristic of the programs in general, and not specific to any one particular episode.

Social aggression was defined in the study as “actions directed at damaging another’s self-esteem, social status, or both, and includes behaviors such as facial expressions of disdain, cruel gossiping, and the manipulation of friendship patterns.” The researchers assessed the attractiveness of socially/physically aggressive characters and whether aggressive behavior was rewarded, punished or justified. Physical aggression was also included in the analysis.

Results indicated that 92% of the programs in the sample contained some type of social aggression. The researchers calculated the rate of socially aggressive interactions per hour by dividing the number of incidents by the number of program hours, finding an average of 14.4 incidents of social aggression every hour, or one incident every 4 minutes.

A majority (78%) of socially aggressive incidents were verbal, in which one character used words to hurt the self-esteem or social standing of another. Results also showed that 81% the children’s programs contained physical aggression. However, the programs were significantly more likely to feature social, not physical, aggression (P=.001). Compared with physical aggression, socially aggression was more likely to be enacted by a physically attractive character (P<.001), portrayed in a humorous manner (P<.001) and neither rewarded nor punished (P<.05).

Amy Jordan, director of the Media and the Developing Child sector at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center and chair of the Children, Adolescents and the Media Division of the International Communication Association, said the study results have important implications.

“As a society, we need to acknowledge that our children are learning to be socially aggressive, and that one source of this learning may be the television shows they watch,” Jordan said. “We may not see physical manifestations of this type of violence, but children who are victims of social aggression from their peers may develop deep and lasting emotional scars.”