By its very nature, WWF appeals particularly to children who need violence in order to feel emotionally aroused. It hooks them with a level of violence until they get bored, then increases the levels of violence to entice them in again. Like addicts needing higher and higher doses of drugs, the children seek out increasingly sadistic images.

Father Paul Andrews, SJ, a psychologist, meets a lot of WWF fans amongst the children he works with. Wrestling, he observes, has a particular appeal to kids who need "a lot of buzz". These are kids who have an almost physical craving for excitement and stimulation. "The threshold gets higher and higher and it changes people," says Andrews.

"There is a massive consensus that the viewing of violence by children results in a violent and abusive nature."

Psychological research has shown that seeing violence on TV makes some children less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Others may become more fearful of the world around them. It has been proven that children who watch a lot of violent TV are more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others.

"Children who have grown up on violent TV need new and increasingly shocking images. While they may know intellectually that the images are fake, viscerally the children do not know it is fake. That is the difficulty," says Marie Murray, head of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin.

"Children know it's fantasy, but they are still addicted to it because of the responses it evokes," she says.

WWF also appeals to the child who is a loner, who is distressed or has poor self-esteem.

"The child who feels inadequate identifies with the wrestlers and gets a vicarious sense of power or revenge. A child who has been bullied is seeing wrestlers doing what the child would subconsciously like to do," she says.

Children who experience or who witness violence are also prone to watching WWF because they are torn between hating violence and trying to understand it, she adds.

"A lot of kids will self-select out of watching WWF. It's the needy and the vulnerable who tend to watch it," she says.

"Parents have to make their own decisions about letting their children watch WWF. They have to ask what value it has in their children's lives," she advises.

The most difficult question for parents may be this: is your child viewing WWF as a way of covering up problems?

"My view is that WWF is not good for children. Parents need to ask: `Why is my child watching this?' " Murray advises.

Not all kids are into violence. US media research has shown that young people are more interested in Sabrina The Teenage Witch than they are in WWF Smackdown. And while 80 per cent of PlayStation and Nintendo games are violent, the most popular game - Frogger - involves helping a frog to cross the road.

Parents may be doing their children a disservice by believing that there is an acceptable level of violence to which children will inevitably be exposed. We do have choices. WWF may harm your child. Not watching WWF won't do any harm at all.