Various reports by the Surgeon General in the last two decades link violence on television and aggressive behavior in children and teenagers. Confronted with such statistics, many parents respond that their children aren't allowed to watch violent programs. Such action is commendable, but some of the greatest dangers of television are more subtle and insidious. George Gerbner and Larry Gross working at the Annenberg School of Communications in the 1970s found that heavy TV viewers live in a scary world. We have found that people who watch a lot of TV see the real world as more dangerous and frightening than those who watch very little.
Heavy viewers are less trustful of their fellow citizens, and more fearful of the real world.
So heavy viewers were less trustful and more fearful than the average citizen. But what constitutes a heavy viewer. Gerber and Gross defined heavy viewers as those adults who watch an average of four or more hours of television a day. Approximately one-third of all American adults fit that category. They found that violence on prime-time TV exaggerated heavy viewers' fears about the threat of danger in the real world.