The Modern Scarlet Letter
For the past several decades the media has impacted and naturally changed our life immeasurably. Television and movies in particular have had a destructive and irreversible influence towards children. In everyday life, a typical American child will spend up to 4 hours engulfed in an imaginary world of bloodshed, robbery, and murder. Being brainwashed from a picture on the screen that celebrates violence, children are typically not taught, or too distracted to be to be able to recognize the difference between imaginary and reality. Children have often been known to imitate their favorite cartoon characters. With cartoons such as "Batman" and the "Men in Black" series, imitating the "violent, some illegal/harmful behavior and disrespectful language" is bound to lead to trouble. Spending close to 28 hours a week, if not more, watching fictional television shows and movies influences a child's behavior to act violently. At a very young age, children are introduced to television. Recent studies have shown that "at six months of age, a child will attend to a children's television program almost 50% of the time" (Hollenbeck &Slaby, 1979). As the typical American child grows up, s/he will continue spending hours mesmerized by their fav
The risks of watching violence on TV or in the movies by children has been studied by numerous scientists and psychiatrists. While many studies have been found to be inconclusive with a combination of results, practically all of the studies agreed that the continuous watching of television and movies makes children more "aggressive, more pessimistic, less imaginative, less empathetic and less capable students" (Torr 31). Along with liquefying their personality it's been found that media violence has made children "less sensitive to violence and to victims of violence" (AAP Committee). While some parents find that desensitizing children makes them "less afraid of the monsters under the bed," it also makes them naive to things such as murder and rape (AAP Committee). In April 1999, just 3 years after the creation of the popular movie "Scream" a horrible tragedy occurred at Columbine High School in which two high school boys ambushed their classmates with gunshots. Although created with a satiric nature, movies such "Scream" promotes and even glamorizes mass murdering to adolescents. The graphically disturbing killings are all committed by a duo of teenage boys, much like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold- the Columbine Killers. After watching the movie's grotesque slaughtering murders repeatedly, the boys finally admit that they "started off by murdering strangers but then realized it was a lot more fun to ki
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 954
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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