Contrary to the belief of some television producers, spiking cartoons with a dose of violence doesn’t make children enjoy them more. Despite growing concern about the effects of media violence on children, violent television shows and movies continue to be produced and marketed to them. An estimated 70 percent of children’s TV shows now contain some degree of violent content, Health News reported.
Researchers in America tested a common view presented by media producers that children like to watch violent programming. For many producers and media critics, the question is not if children love violence, but rather why children love violence.
The goal of this study was to examine children’s liking of violent content while independently manipulating the amount of action, which is often confounded with violence in the existing research. Researchers sought the opinions of 128 youngsters following exposure to a series of animated programmes in America. The participants were between the ages of 5 and 11 years (from kindergarten through fourth grade), and included as many boys as girls.
The children viewed one of four different versions of short animated pieces that ran for about five minutes and were designed specifically for the study. All were slapstick in nature, but they differed in terms of the degree ofviolence included. Afterwards, the researchers led the children through questionnaires about the different episodes. It was found that violent content was actually a turn off for boys, depending on how they connected with the characters involved.
In fact, the less violent the characters, the more boys identified with them and enjoyed the program at hand. Girls did not have the same reaction, however, feeling no more attached to those characters that were less aggressive.
The researchers suggested that this may be because slapstick content generally appeals more to boys than girls. Nevertheless, girls did not actually prefer the more violent content any more than the boys did. The researchers conclude that if producers are willing to work on making cartoons that aren’t violent so much as action packed, they can still capture their target audience better and without the harmful consequences.
Daily aspirin can cut death risk in bowel cancer patients: A new study reveals that consuming daily low doses of aspirin can significantly cut the death risk in patients suffering from bowel cancer.
Experts found that bowel cancer patients who took aspirin frequently for at least nine months after their diagnosis had a 33% greater chance of survival, Iranian Press TV reported.
The study suggests that aspirin might stop certain cancers and act as a cancer therapy, slowing down or preventing cancer spread.
“Aspirin should not be seen as an alternative to other treatments, such as chemotherapy, but could be a useful additional treatment,” said lead researcher Dr Gerrit-Jan Liefers of the Leiden University Medical Centre in The Netherlands.
New findings indicate that taking aspirin for any length of time after diagnosis cuts the chance of dying from bowel cancer by 23%.
The drug can also have unpleasant and dangerous side effects, causing irritation of the stomach lining and internal bleeding in a very small minority of patients, researchers emphasized.
“Though the study adds to the growing evidence about the benefits of aspirin, there are still questions we need to answer about the side effects, such as internal bleeding,” said Sarah Lyness of Cancer Research from the UK.
