The V Chip – Making Viewing Safe Since 1999

Opinions will always be divided on the effect of television upon young minds. While many will always maintain that there is too big a price to pay for program-makers’ freedom to portray sex, violence and profanity, there will also always be people who counter that claim by saying that real life contains those things in great volume, and has done since long before television was ever invented. This is an argument that will never be settled, and as such there is no point in trying to enforce a regulatory standard on the content under debate. Gratuitous and extreme, inappropriate and out-of-context use of them is largely banned.

It is a fact that what is considered “acceptable” will differ considerably between households, and for this reason all televisions sold in the United States since 2000 have been required to have a “V-chip”. The “V” stands for “viewer control” and is used to block out content that the parents in the house consider to be inappropriate. The chip can be deactivated – so that parents can watch whatever they want when the children have gone to bed, for example. However it has emerged in the decade since V-chip compliance was necessary that many parents find the technology confusing.

The V-chip can probably be considered a positive step, in that it puts censorship in the hands of the parental authorities, and means there is no need to implement an overall standard which would be grossly unsatisfactory to a large section of the population. However, there are many people who feel that it still allows too much room for confusion.