SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS

I received an email from a good friend with the title, “Not again.” When I opened it, a link was attached with an article about a 14 year old who went on a shooting spree today at SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland. This rampage left two teachers and three students wounded. According to CNN’s affiliate, WKYC-TV, the reason for the student’s violent behavior was his anger towards a recent suspension.

Obviously, this is not the first time such hostility has occurred in high schools. For many students, school is like a second home — a place parents send them for education and a safe environment. Sadly, they are never entirely protected. And this incident makes it clear that it doesn’t matter what kind of school it is or where it’s located. Violence can crop up anywhere.

Every time I hear about children arming themselves to kill their imagined adversaries, it makes me incredibly sad. The later generations have increasingly become so desensitized to violence. Some have pointed the blame at parents for minimal supervision of their kids’ multi-media consumption. Would parental control stop children from acting out their aggression against fellow classmates?

Ever since the Janet Jackson episode (AKA Nipplegate) during the halftime performance at the 2004 Super Bowl, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has imposed more fines and stricter rules on indecency. What about violence? Blood and gore has become standard in primetime television. Kids today are steeped in video games, movies and music that make it sound cool and macho to kill. They win points on video games when they blow someone’s head off. According to the American Psychology Association (APC), violent music lyrics have a definite impact on children and can cause them to have thoughts and feelings that are aggressive in nature. Teens are consuming this regularly so the lines of right and wrong are increasingly becoming blurred.

Blaming parents and the media are pretty old tactics, however, and both ideas can be problematic. It is impossible for parents to keep tabs on their children 24/7. They can’t be blamed if their kid snaps and shoots five people if the trigger was anything other than their direct upbringing. Regarding media content, there are those who want everything on television above a PG rating to be banned. Although it is easy to blame the media for the desensitization towards violence, it is hard to directly correlate media and school shootings. Child exposure to extreme violence in whatever form is wide-spread, but only a few actually engage in it. Are these school shootings due to media violence or lack of parental attention? Or do these kids have a predisposition to becoming inexplicably violent?

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