In 1965, American children spent 30 hours/week with their parents; in 2002 they spent 17 hours/week with their parents and 40 hours/week on average watching TV, using the computer, listening to the radio or CDs, and playing video games. In 2010, with technology, children have nearly 24-hour access to media with 8-18-year-olds devoting an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes for using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). If “media multitasking” (using more than one medium at a time) is included, they average 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those 7½ hours of media access.

Televisions are also commonly present in bedrooms, with 19% of infants, 29% of 2-3-year-olds, 43% of 4-6-year-olds, and 68% of children 8 years and older having a television in their bedrooms.

TV news coverage may be primarily episodic (focused on events) or thematic (including attention to trends, data on other conditions, providing context for an event). Ninety percent of network crime stories are framed episodically, and it has been hypothesized that this episodic presentation makes the viewer more likely to blame the victim and less likely to think of the larger context in which these events take place.

Studies of stories about violence on local news programs suggest that they overemphasize violent crime, distort issues of race, and cultivate fear of urban areas in heavy viewers. Both children and adults who watch a lot of TV come to believe that the world is a far more dangerous place than it really is.

Children are influenced by media—they learn by observing, imitating, and adopting behaviors. Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed. Because children younger than 8 years cannot discriminate between fantasy and reality, they may be especially vulnerable to some of these learning processes and may, thereby, be more influenced by media violence.