Violence in The Media

Media today has changed the way the youth interprets violence. The violence in media has dulled teenagers to the actual seriousness of certain bad situations. Some say that the violence in media is not a big deal; people just tend to exaggerate it. I disagree; the media has had a huge influence on teenagers since the mid-50s. Many teens started to rebel once they heard what song lyrics meant, once they saw who was on

TV, they started to imitate it causing adults to be disturbed by these teens’ actions. Although adults attempted to stop it, as rebellious teenagers, they continued to do whatever adults did not approve of. This still continues on today, but it has just got worse.

One morning, I was talking to my mom about video games and movies, she said that teenagers are dumb because we copy everything we see on the television and repeat what we hear in song lyrics. When she made this comment I wondered if maybe the movies and songs were about teenagers in today’s society, just that it’s harder for us to recognize it because we’re the ones living the moment. We refuse to believe that we do such things now-a-days. This is how I began to question what rappers are really rapping about and why movies and video games are so violent for teenagers.

In this paper I will investigate teenagers from the 1940s, 50s, and 2000s. I want to see where it all “went wrong”. In addition, I will research the good or bad influence the media has had on the teens, such as song lyrics, television shows, movies, and video games. I want to know where and why the teens changed from being the, suppose, good kids to some rebels. In addition, I want to see the influence media has upon the development of a child and how it affects them as they grow up to their teens and adult years.

Some perspectives that should be taken into account should be the teenager, parent, and the media. If rebel teenagers are the problem, what are parents doing to help this problem get solved? Furthermore, what are parents doing to monitor their children’s use of media? If parents let their 13 year old son or daughter play M rated video games and watch R rated movies, what are they expecting to get out of this? The parents cannot blame media for the lack of attention they are giving their children. The media is being affected because it is their job to entertain people of all ages, it just so happens that to get teenagers’

attention now-a-days it has to be something violent. Again I ask, why?  The media will be affected gravely if their biggest consumers are restricted from attending certain showings and buying certain games and albums.

The sources I will be using throughout this paper will be a few that explain how teens from the 1940s were and how they changed by the mid-50s, such as AmericanCultural History, which describes the life during the 1940s and The Life of a 1950s Teenager, which, as the titles implies, describes the life of a teenager during the 1950s. I will also use sources which show the increase in violence in movies and games, present day. This includes Top PG-13Movies Now Have More Gun Violence than R Rated Films, which explains how violence in films has risen, since the 1950s. Lastly, I will include sources which give suggestions, like, how parents must handle their child’s media access, like, What Parents Can Do aboutMedia Violence. I will strictly write about how the violence in the media has affected the youth, I will not write about how the media affects a child’s sexuality or anything other than violence in the media. I will be including an interview with a parenting magazine, via email, hopefully within the next week. I would also like to get the teenage perspective, someone who actually plays the games and believes it isn’t such a big idea and interview another teenager who doesn’t play or watch these types of media. Lastly, I will like to interview a parent whose child plays M rated games and watches R rated movies and a parent whose child does not play these types of games and is not allowed to watch such movies. I would like to compare the two types of teens and parents and see where the difference lies, such as attitudes, parent to child relationship, academics, and socially. I feel like these few interviews will assist me in understanding the development of each child with and without the different types of media.