The changing facets of entertainment media in India and its impact on children

Abstract

Media has become an inseparable part of our global society. It has been an evolving process since the invention of printing by Gutenberg in the 15th century in Germany. The beginning of this process in India as a part of mass communication to propagate news and views about the current happening in the contemporary society are credited to James A, Hickey who published the first Newspaper in India Bengal Gazette (1780). The birth of electronic media in India was seen with the coming of All India Radio (1923) and later television saw an eruption of a dormant volcano. Television today has become one of the most influential means of mass media especially amongst youth. In India with coming of foreign channels via cable television in early 90's brought a major revolution amongst the audience in their television viewing habits. The new channels like BBC, National Geographic, and Discovery added a new dimension towards digital learning and knowledge of our globe and its people but at the same time foreign movie and music channels have been the transmitters of the extreme scenes of violence and sex on the television screen. The social learning theory states that it is the influence of media which makes a child to imitate the acts of aggression which later forms a large part of his childhood experience. Aggressive violence behaviour is also generated through filmed violence which results in emotional arousal especially when children of for and five years of age view violent rather than non violent television programmes. Such type of impact has been quite harmful on the physical and mental development of children. Indirectly it has also perpetuated the incidence of juvenile violence and crime. The attitudes of parents have also been paramount in deciding whether or not children are at risk of exposure. It has been observed that much parental concern was expressed about the level of sex and violence on watched. This point of parental control is particularly important for young children. The television but at the same time a relatively low level of parental control over what was being present paper traces the development of the growth of television and video gaming culture in The scope of enquiry is concerned to look at the relationships between violent content in India so as to establish a causal association between television violence and real life violence. television programmes and video games and its impact on young viewers.