Assaulted by TV. (Scan).(Statistical Data Included)(Brief Article)

The longstanding argument over whether TV-watching can spur personal violence just got clearer. A detailed 17-year study of 707 randomly selected families found that people who watched more TV as teens and young adults showed increased rates of assault, fighting, robbery, and other aggressive acts in later years. Of 14-year-olds who watched less than an hour of television a day, 6 percent committed an aggressive act by the time they turned 22; that percentage jumped to 23 percent among those who watched one to two hours a day, and to 29 percent for those who watched three or more hours per day.

The study is the first long-term observation of the impact of TV on teens and young adults, rather than just on young children. "These researchers have shown that if you follow people from adolescence and early adulthood on, TV viewing predicts aggression," explains Brad Bushman, a ...