Watching violent films and soap operas makes children grow up to be psychopaths

It is undeniable that watching movies and soap operas is a favorite activity for many people to unwind after a day of activities. The report from the KPI even shows that Indonesian children rank at the top in matters of watching the longest television broadcast among ASEAN countries. On average, Indonesian children watch up to 5 hours of TV every day, while children from other ASEAN countries only spend 2 to 3 hours in front of the TV per day.

What is even more unfortunate is that most of the shows they eat every day are full of elements of violence and sadistic things, which are totally uneducative. So, what is the effect of watching sadistic and violent films on children's development?

Children learn to imitate what they see

Children learn by imitating what they see from social interactions. Because since birth, the brain network that supports interactive learning has begun to develop.

That is why children can recognize and imitate facial expressions or cues in their environment. This imitation trait even continues until the child is a little older, so don't be surprised if your child can imitate your movements, words, emotions, language, or behavior. This is what ultimately worries parents if their child imitates scenes on television.

And sure enough. Reporting from Tribun News, at the end of April 2015, a grade 1 elementary school student in Pekanbaru died as a result of being beaten up by his friends. According to the information from his parents, the victim and his friends were playing while imitating a fight scene in the soap opera "7 Tiger Humans" which was shown on television. This is just one example of the many cases that have occurred.

Several studies published in the Urban Children's Institute show that watching too much television not only negatively impacts children's overall health and achievement, but also the development of their behavior in the future.

The frequency of watching violent films fosters psychopathic attitudes in children

Guntarto's 2000 study shows that children who watch too many films and television shows that smell of violence can grow up to become children who have difficulty concentrating and lack of attention to their surroundings. Another study conducted by Anderson in 2012 also showed that children who watched violent films were more likely to view the world as a less sympathetic, dangerous, and scary place. This negative perception of the outside world can over time foster aggressive attitudes and personalities in children.

"Children who like to watch sadistic shows on television tend to show sadistic behavior in the future, while people who watch TV too often tend to have bad behavior later," said researchers from the University of Otaga in New Zealand, based on the results of a study conducted published in the journal Pediatric.

Researchers found that children who watched more TV were more likely to commit crimes as adults. In fact, every hour a child spends watching TV at night, their risk of committing a criminal offense increases by 30 percent.

This research was conducted on 1,000 children born from 1972 to 1973 in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. When they were five years old, children began to be interviewed about their TV viewing habits every 2 years. Researchers then compared the information they had with the participants' criminal records aged 17-26, including armed robbery, murder, malicious assault, rape, assaulting people with animals, and violent vandalism were recorded separately. The researchers found similarities in aggressive, antisocial, and negative emotional attitudes in the same participants aged 21-26 years.

Antisocial traits, or what is often referred to as "sociopaths" or "psychopaths" is a mental disorder in which a person cannot feel empathy for their surroundings and is often associated with manipulative attitudes and contrary to laws such aswild compulsive(lying continuously without realizing it), stealing, destroying property, and violence.

The individual with psychopathy does not have a sense of remorse and guilt for his actions towards others, nor a sense of responsibility that is almost zero.

Parents need to accompany their children while watching television

Although the reasons why watching films can be a factor in the formation of antisocial attitudes are still unclear (there are too many other factors regarding the possible causes of this), researchers say that there is one thing that can clearly minimize the negative impact of watching most films and soap operas on child development: spend less time watching children.

Some other things that parents need to do to minimize the negative effects of television viewing are:

Learn about types and rating films that can be watched by children. By knowing the type and rating of films, parents can find out what films are suitable or unsuitable for children to watch according to their age.
Avoid facilitating a child's room with a television, especially if you and your child don't sleep in the same room.
Provide strict prohibitions and assistance to children who watch violent films. The goal is that parents can monitor what children watch, and can have discussions with children about the films they watch. One way is to tell him that the scenes on television are not real; so that the violence would cause pain if it was done in real life, so they shouldn't imitate the dangerous scene.
Encourage your child to do other activities, such as enjoying nature and the environment, socializing with friends his age, or parents can introduce children to new fun hobbies.