The relationship among TV violence, aggression, anti-social behaviors and parental mediation

Abstract

This paper proposes to ascertain whether there is a correlation between parent-child relationships and media consumption in Kuwait, and if so, it will examine the factors that play a role in it such as the parents’ education level, marital status, and socioeconomic status (SES). In our research we attempt to find out whether when there is less parental supervision and interaction if this will lead children into consuming more television and whether more television consumption will lead adolescents to assume anti-social behaviors, most notably violent behaviors. We built on the theory of modeling and social learning and the effects on violence, seminally noted in the work by Albert Bandura, and theorized that we would also find correlations with TV consumption and violent behaviors in our sample. We wrote, assembled and circulated a qualitative survey based on the literature review consisting of personal interviews of 120 respondents and asked them about their childhood relationship with TV, violent behavior, and their parents’ control of their TV consumption. We reported our results as a narrative based on the responses in our sample. What we found in our results was that a large number of adolescents in Kuwait were exhibiting violent behaviors directly correlated to the amount of violent content they consumed on TV as a child especially when there was little parental control or mediation, this was especially true with the male respondents in our sample.