Only We Can Stop The Cycle

Only We Can Stop the Cycle

The evil cycle of violent behavior has been proven to start at an early age, sometimes as early as three or four years old. Children learn by examples of the life they see around them. If your parents were in an abusive relationship, chances are that you will seek out to be the victim or the abuser yourself. Children watching violent television shows, movies and playing violent video games are leading to more aggressive behavior toward their parents, teachers and siblings. Violence is all around us in our everyday lives, allowing children to watch and play games that are over violent is the warning sign that many parents need to pay attention to.

Children begin to learn by example at an early age. Usually around three to four years old, their brains start to take in information and process it as what they see, not what is actually there. If you have two glasses, one tall and skinny, the other short and wide, and pour juice equally into each glass, ask a four year old which one has more juice. The answer will almost always be the tall and skinny glass has more juice. This is how their minds process the information in front of them. Allowing children at this age to watch cartoons is the most detrimental to their young growing minds. "Cartoons are the most violent form of entertainment on network television today" (Levine, 54). Typically cartoons have an act of violence twenty five times per one hour. To children of such a young age, they have no sense of reality vs. fantasy. To see a rabbit slapped in the face with a frying pan and then rearranges itself to be normal again, it's not too far fetched in the eyes of the preschooler watching. Though clearly it is not within the laws of nature to be true, the preschooler does not have that ability to understand that it would probably be a dead rabbit now.

Once children begin to grow up a bit more, the distinction between reality and fantasy is becoming clearer. By the ages of seven, and eight, they are no longer interested in the cartoon that shows some rabbit being blown up by dynamite, they have realized that it is not real and they don't want to see it. Instead they want to see movies like Home Alone, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These movies show violent behavior of a whole new kind, it's real. In Home Alone, the child Kevin is left at home and has to defend himself from the robbers that are trying to break into the house. Normally parents would teach the child to call 9-1-1, but this child beats the robbers up with everything he can, even a hot iron to the face. What does this show the children watching? It's okay to disrespect the adults in any situation. It is almost as if Kevin, the boy in the movie, has become a superhero. Superheroes are those that can not be defeated under any circumstances. Children at this very influential age have a hard enough time controlling the aggression that is naturally built into them, they don't need more added to it.

Children of the early adolescence ages of twelve, thirteen and fourteen, being teenagers by today's standards have even a tougher job to stay in line. Teenagers of this age are not only interested in the violence that is in video games now too, but the physical, social and sexual behaviors are accelerated. By this age, they are going through some really hard changes within their own bodies and minds. The influences of television, music videos, video games and movies are more prominent now than during any other time in life. These teenagers are trying to find who they are and are looking to the reality of the media to supply their self image by what they are seeing. Baggy jeans, low rider pants, thong underwear on girls, low cut tops, all of this is what the images they see and what they "think" they want to become. Once they have their minds set to it, they don't give up for anything. They want to be "cool" like the people in the rap video on MTV.

This age is also the most influential time for the violent behavior to surface. The video games especially bring this into full circle. The game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, teaches kids to be drug dealers, pimps, and gang leaders. It also teaches the young men who are primarily the ones who are playing it to be disrespectful of women. What does teaching boys to treat women as "whores", as portrayed in the game, tell them to do later in life? They are learning that treating women as sexual objects rather than actual human beings is okay in today's world. The scenario for this lifestyle could lead to terrible things, sexual assault, adultery, physical and verbal abuse, and perhaps even murder.

The scenario has already become a reality. In Orange County, California, three young men ages sixteen through nineteen were on trial and found guilty of the rape of a sixteen year old female classmate. Not only did they rape her while she was unconscious, but they video taped the entire incident. One of the young men was the son of a retired police officer. Does that mean that the father failed in his job of being a parent? Not necessarily, it just means that when someone needed to change the material he was viewing or video game he was playing, it didn't happen. No one paid attention to the affects of the media he was watching. There are so many ways the kids today can find what they want and view it, and parents will never know.

The use of the internet has become a world wide epidemic. The kids that are growing up today are more computer smart then school smart. Not all parents have the knowledge needed to supervise the activities on the internet, not only because they are not as "computer literate" as these children are, but because the children's abilities of using the internet and hiding what they have done is so enormous. So many young girls are finding what they consider to be love on the internet. Men, (not boys) grown men are feeding on the insecurities and low self esteem of many young girls. They promise these girls the world and then meet up with them to kidnap, rape or kill them. Parents of these girls have no idea why, when or

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