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<title> Violence on television: How does it effect our lives? </title>
	After having spent a Friday or Saturday night in front of the television set, we can draw the conclusion that violence is commonly portrayed in films, news, TV soaps and other TV shows. The TV programs convey various messages that people interpret and act upon in different ways. Hence, TV violence has different inputs on people. What is entertaining fiction to a forty-year-old can seem like harsh reality to a seven-year-old. What has a deterrent effect on somebody might be encouraging to somebody else. How we interpret what we see on television is not only based on age and gender, I would say more on childhood and adolescence experiences and your relationship to your family, friends, and not to ignore, how much time you spend in front of the television set. In this aspect, I am going to discuss how TV violence affects us psychologically, and how we react upon what we see.

Humans have always been fascinated and tempted by the forbidden things in life. Just like Eve in the Garden of Eden wanting to eat that apple, we are by the same token tempted to use physical violence. But instead of walking out on the street provoking fights and other hostile actions, most of us make ourselves comfortable in our living room sofa and let our minds play with the situations depicted by television. Even if Aristotle did not watch TV, we can discuss his suggestion that drama was effective and desirable because of "catharsis". 
This meant that the audience became psychologically involved with the story "on stage", even though they knew it was only fiction, and that when aggression climaxed among the actors, there was a "catharsis", or release of pressure in the audience, which was pleasurable to experience and left them uplifted, and less likely to act violently themselves. But the question is if this 'release of pressure' is the actual cause of us not committing violent actions. I think it has more to do with our mental barriers that keep us from doing certain things, such as throwing ourselves from a window from the seventh floor just to see what happens, or put a house on fire - more or less, not making our inner, unexpressed thoughts and longings into actions.

	However, some people have an urge to practice violence, they feel they have to manifest their agitation. What separates these people from the majority of the population that do not provoke any violence is hard to say. In some way they probably lack control over their body and emotions that most people gain in their adolescence. Maybe nobody ever told them that violence was something destructive, hence, they never learnt what was wrong or right. If children grow up without any guidance from their parents or other adults, they might use television as a moral muse. The TV gets to be their contact with the grown-up world and they think what is depicted is reality. As we all know, violence is nowadays a common ingredient even in children's programs, and consequently, this can become their reality. Children can then reach the state when they become immune to the horror of violence and gradually start accepting violent actions as a way to solve problems. Instead of negotiation, a punch or a kick is then the easiest way out. If this way of dealing with difficult situations becomes successful and nobody advises them or help them to get on the right track, they might be bound to live in a harsh climate, where violence is every day reality. Maybe we cannot put all the blame on television violence, but it surely has an input on children's and adult's behaviour. 

	Violence is not only depicted in the form of entertainment, it is also there to portray reality. Every so often, news programs show us how people are being shot down in front of the camera and how dead people are lying on the ground, covered with blood. How does this kind of violence affect us? I suppose that if you have never been exposed to physical abuse or other kinds of violence, you cannot grasp what the people you see on the screen are going through. And if we were to take in and consider everything we see, our brains would be overfilled with emotions and we would not be able to live a normal life. 

After having discussed the input of TV violence I make the conclusion that we all respond differently to what we see on television. The violence on TV does have a negative effect, which is reflected in today's society, but we cannot decide to abolish or censor all TV violence. What we can do is to exclude violence in children's programs and other programs where it does not have a significant role and to be more aware of what kind of signals the violence emit.
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