June Vol. 1, 2009 By Laila A. Rahman The American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children under two years old be
restricted from watching television, and that children who are
older than two be restricted to watching one to two hours of
quality programming per day. Experts have assessed in two
separate studies done by the American Psychological Association
that some television programming is leading children into
unhealthy habits and aggressive behavior as adults. The first
study –which was performed by several psychologists including L.
Rowell Huesmann, Ph.D., Jessica Moise-Titus, Ph.D., and Leonard
D. Eron, Ph.D of the University of Michigan– concluded that
children identify personally with the characters they see on
television and perceive the situations they see to be real.
Researchers believe “violent situations that children are most
likely to model their behavior after are [the] ones in which
they identify with the perpetrator of violence, the perpetrator
is rewarded for the violence and i