Monkey See, Monkey Do

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Violence in media today is almost as common as a teenage girl knowing the name of the actor Channing Tatum. In America, we practically grow up on movies that display countless acts of violence against one another. This is a major way in which human society as a whole has changed from growing up in an environment with a lot of real life violence sporadically around the world, to having some sort of physical conflict involved in every movie or TV show. In the past there have been several cases where people have seen a violent action through a media source and then tried carrying out an action similar to the one seen, except in real life. This is proof to an existence of the presence of violence having an impact on certain viewers. Violence is something that should be closely monitored when allowing children to view it. The lack of protecting young eyes from seeing certain actions other people are committing in the fake world of Hollywood can have a direct impact on the amount of violence that kid grows up thinking is acceptable or an option in any given situation.
Violence is viewed by children on a daily basis and is becoming just another fun thing to do. In the article, “Aggression: The impact of media violence” by Sissela Bok, she describes the relationship with the amount of violence we expose to people having an affect on their actions. “Media analyst Ken Auletta reports that, in 1992, a mother in France sued the head of the state TV channel that carried the American series MacGyver, claiming that her son was accidentally injured as a result of having copied MacGyver’s recipe for making a bomb”(Bok 225). This is a specific case where something that was intended to do violence made it into a boy’s head, which led him to inadve...

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...ever has been and will keep having an impact on America’s youth if we let it. “Parents may not be able to control the amount and the severity of violence shown on TV, websites or in video games, however, a parent does have control over how often children are exposed to these mediums.” (Does Violence in the Media Influence Children?). The amount of violence seen by kids today should be a concern of any parent trying to be the best for their kids. I know that when I am a parent it is something that will be supervised because of its possible negative influence on their lives by the old saying of monkey see monkey do.

Work Cited
Ackley, Katherine Anne. Perspectives on Contemporary Issues: Readings across the Disciplines. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.
"Does Violence in the Media Influence Children?" New Jersey 1015. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.

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