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Violence on Television |
Section 551 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 |
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Violence on Television |
Section 551 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 |
Section 551 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 encourages the video programming industry to "establish voluntary rules for rating video programming that contains sexual, violent or other indecent material about which parents should be informed before it is displayed to children," and to voluntarily broadcast signals containing these ratings..
(SEC. 551. PARENTAL CHOICE IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMING.)(a) FINDINGS- The Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Television influences children's perception of the values and behavior that are common and acceptable in society.
(2) Television station operators, cable television system operators, and video programmers should follow practices in connection with video programming that take into consideration that television broadcast and cable programming has established a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of American children.
(3) The average American child is exposed to 25 hours of television each week and some children are exposed to as much as 11 hours of television a day.
(4) Studies have shown that children exposed to violent video programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children not so exposed, and that children exposed to violent video programming are prone to assume that acts of violence are acceptable behavior.
(5) Children in the United States are, on average, exposed to an estimated 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television by the time the child completes elementary school.
6) Studies indicate that children are affected by the pervasiveness and casual treatment of sexual material on television, eroding the ability of parents to develop responsible attitudes and behavior in their children.
(7) Parents express grave concern over violent and sexual video programming and strongly support technology that would give them greater control to block video programming in the home that they consider harmful to their children.
(8) There is a compelling governmental interest in empowering parents to limit the negative influences of video programming that is harmful to children.
(9) Providing parents with timely information about the nature of upcoming video programming and with the technological tools that allow them easily to block violent, sexual, or other programming that they believe harmful to their children is a nonintrusive and narrowly tailored means of achieving that compelling governmental interest.
