Children begin watching television at an extremely young age, sometimes as young as six months, and are ardent viewers by the time they are two or three years old. Watching television can prevent young children from acquiring important developmental skills, and can actually promote aggressive behaviour in them. Some important skills that toddlers cannot be developed in front of a television set. Television gives them dialogue to listen to as well as a visual representation of the action to imitate. In " Understanding Child Development" Rosalind Charlesworth says that this kind of imitative play cuts down on a child's need to think for its self and the use of his/her own play ideas. I can remember when I was younger t

· Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Viewing violence encourages children to see other people as "enemies" rather than as individuals with thoughts and feelings like themselves. Children who cannot put themselves in others' shoes may become less desirable playmates.

· Violent TV programs do not teach good language skills. Young children tend to repeat things they hear as they begin to develop their own vocabularies. Violent movies and TV programs show children a very limited way to talk about their problems-and to solve them.

Finally, a study by Leonard Eron began in 1963 and was one of the longest termed studies to take place. Eron began his study by assessing the development of aggression in third class pupils, eight year olds, in a New York Town. In the course of the study, he asked children to report on their television viewing and other things they liked to do, as well as their ratings of aggression of other children. He also interviewed teachers and asked them to indicate in the classroom, who was more aggressive or less aggressive and he obtained information from parents about children's television viewing and home discipline and family values. He conducted that study hen these youngsters were eight years old and wrote a report about the aggressive behaviour of the eight year olds noting in passing that there was a relationship between children's level of aggression and their television viewing. Children who reported, or whose parents reported, that the youngsters preferred and often viewed more violent programs were more likely to be the ones nominated by their peers and teachers as more aggressive in school. He followed up on these youngsters ten years later, when they were 18 years old, and again found a relationship between TV viewing and aggression. However, the most interesting, and strongest, relationship between television viewing at age 8 and aggressive behaviour at 18. He concluded that there were some long-term effects of early television viewing on later aggressive behaviour. In the 1980's, Eron again followed up on these children as young adults, at age 30. Now, he found that there was a relationship between early television viewing and arrest and conviction for violent interpersonal crimes; spouse abuse, child abuse, murder, and aggravated assault. This study is not without controversy, but there is sufficient evidence to convince some researchers that there is a long-term effect of early violence viewing on later aggressive behavio

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