 thellama73 wrote:
I don't believe that gang membership is caused by media either. The idea that kids watch West Side Story and then go "Ooh, I'm going to join a gang now" is absurd. People join gangs for the same reason people have always joined gangs: they're poor and desperate and there is a lot of social pressure and fear that they might get hurt if they don't have the protection of said gang. This is a different category of people from the psychopath mass murderer who shoots up schools.
I do not believe that violence has gotten worse since the advent of television. There are a lot more people now, so you see a lot more crimes, but as a percentage I would be willing to bet that it has either remained constant or even gone down. Remember organized crime in the twenties? Was that the result of newspapers glorifying gangsters?
There was a concern a few decades back of kids seeing things like Superman on TV and trying to jump off houses thinnking they could fly. There was a lot of huffing and puffing about the dangers, but it didn't happen. I think one kid did it once and he was severely mentally disabled, if I remember correctly. I just don't think people give kids enough credit. They are not the sheep you think they are. Far more crime is caused by bad parenting than by TV shows. We should be focusing on that. There were some recent studies done showing that children in single parent families were extremely more likely to commit violent crimes. Let's be upset about that and let me qatch my Quentin Tarantino movies in peace.
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Interesting! You do have some very interesting viewpoints to render to us all. thanks!
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Society, Violence, And The Media
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