Violence in today’s society is at an all-time high.
That being the case there are many causes for the increased violence in our society.
Video games and different movies persuade children to think that violence is the cool thing to do.
Currently, the top video games in America are Call of Duty, Halo, and Madden. Two of the top three most played video games in America today are violent gun games. Violence has been the leading cause of death for children, adolescents and young adults. Such violence is more prevalent than disease, cancer or congenital disorders.
When are we going to make a change?
In “Violent Media is Good for Kids,” the author Gerrard Jones says that “Rage can be an energizing emotion”. Throughout this small article Jones is on the side of violent media. Jones says that violent comic books helped him with his childhood. He also thinks that there are other ways for children to find something that will help them as well.
In this article, Jones is arguing that violent media helps kids funnel their rage. “At its most fundamental level, what we call creative violence- head bonking cartoons, bloody video games, playground karate, toy guns, gives children a tool to master their rage. Children will feel rage. Even the sweetest and most civilized of them,”. Everyone in today’s society is going to have rage no matter what, rage is uncontrollable. But the things that are not helping the case is having a violent media that helps young Americans suppress their rage in a fantasy world.
Jones uses such imagery to help bring in his readers. If Jones began his article by giving his own opinion out in the open it would be shot down, however he hides it under personal stories. He tells a story about himself and how comic books helped him out, because they were “juvenile. And violent.” Using this as a shield so the difficult conversation can be had.
Lastly in Jones’s article, there are three pictures from his comic books. The first one is a picture of a man in a space suit battling to the death with space aliens. The man in the space suit has this gun and his firing a laser beams at the aliens. In children’s eyes this is really cool and they want to find a way to reenact it. The second picture is of a dinosaur with a human face being shot at a bunch of people, the dinosaur is saying power. Lastly the third picture is of a big black monster. The monster is destroying everyone he is fighting and yelling shut up. Kids could see this as them fighting the world around them in away. A lot kids feel that everyone is against them so they feel pushed against the wall. This could be because everybody is telling them what to do, and how to act, but the kid just wants to do what they want to do. If kids saw this, they would try to copy these actions in some way or another.
In closing, everyone is affected by social media one way or another. People in today’s society need to learn how to cope with different issues instead of resorting to violence. This is hard to accomplish though because violent media has such a high effect on kids, whether or not that effect is positive or negative. In Jones’s closing words he compares sheltering his kids from violent media to the “Victorians.” He states, “We risk confusing them about their natural aggression in the same way the Victorians confused their children about their sexuality.” That is one of the most powerful statements I have heard because parents just want the best for their kids and they don’t want to confuse them in anyway.
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