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Similarly, the American public enjoys viewing violent and abusive programs at the risk of adapting aggressive and unacceptable behaviors. Because the networks refuse to act as a “mother” and to limit the amount of violence shown on television, there are no restrictions to prevent television’s violent candy from rotting away at the teeth of society. The increasing amount of violence on television, moreover, effects many young male and female viewers in a very unhealthy and hurtful way causing children to have problems with their moral balance, their behavior, and their views on It often seems that everywhere a person looks, violence rears its ugly head: in the streets, at schools, on the back alleys, and even at homes. Over the past decade, in the living rooms of almost every American family there sits an outlet for violence that often goes unnoticed. It is the television that portrays killing of single individuals and groups of people, sexual abuse, violence against women, and many other horrible forms of violence. Sadly, children and teenagers who watch the television are often pulled unto realistic world of violence scenes with sometimes devastating results. For instance, many times we can hear on the news a 16-year-old boy breaks into a cellar and wears gloves because he does not want to leave his fingerprints and discovers how to do so on television. Likewise, instead of just seeing a police officer handing a ticket to a speeding violator on the road, he can beat the offender bloody on television. Children (and even some adults), however, do not always realize this is not the way difficult situations are handled in real life. Such youngsters come to expect the violence in everyday life; they create it to be Besides the fact that violence on television is able to be much more exciting and enthralling than it is viewed in reality, the children find the violent and the hostile behaviors of the characters in movies fun to imitate. They do imitate the models because the ideas shown on television are more attractive to the viewers. This factor has been widely seen with the advent of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and Star Wars. Young children cannot seem to get enough of this fictional characters and portray them often. Or here is another example, after watching the movie Natural Born Killers, students in Columbine High School killed numbers of their classmates and teachers thinking that shooting was “natural” act to perform. Many other movies and shows as well as advertising on television do perform the examples of violence and physical abuse: slapping, hitting, biting, spitting, burning, and many other forms of physical aggressions that effect a young child’s mind disrupting the learning abilities and upsetting the moral balance. The information cannot be ignored. Violent television viewing does effect young people. On this topic, writes Caryl Rivers, “Make no mistake, it is not sex we are talking about here. Violence against women.” Rivers expresses that rock videos and all-music channels have gone too far. In addition to the fact that teenagers have instant access to see Prince wearing only a purple jock strap and Mick Jagger unzipping his fly as he gyrates, the same videos portray the rock stars “garroting, beating or sobomizing a woman in their numbers” (202). Once again all of these images shown on TV are the reflections of adult reality in children’s eyes. How are the children going to know that rape of women, incest, molestation, hurting, and sexual contact without consent is not OK in moral context of a normal person? The most important aspect of violence on television is preventing it. The silence about the problem does not help in any way. Moreover, the solutions are often overlooked because of commercial purposes. To find solutions, Michael Landon, for example, directs Little House on the Prairie and creates conflicts without killing in his programs. His goal is to put moral lessons in his show in an attempt to teach while entertaining. On the other programs like Hill Street Blues and Law and Order some violence does occur, yet the themes are not the action but rather its consequences. Finally, the parents themselves are the child’s role models from which he learns. It is important for the parents to step in and turn the set off when a brutal program comes on in order to prevent kids from watching it. Besides, if the child learns at an early age that violence in movies is bad, then he can turn the set off for himself when he is older. In conclusion, the problem of violent television and its effects is not easy to fix nor it is going to go away without taking certain measures to prevent young people from ever being exposed to violent images. Men and women, parents and grandparents, teachers and friends need to speak out on this issue. After all, what is the world going to be like when the people who are now children become the rulers of it? Bibliography: Word Count: 894
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