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Americans presently have the good fortune of an enviably high standard of living fuelled by physical prosperity, the ability to act freely, and a combination of favorable circumstances and situations. Despite this healthy national environment, Americans have experienced rising restlessness and anxiety over the past few years, feelings spawned by the fact their country is the global leader of all kinds of anti-social activities like murder, crime, drug consumption, divorce, teen suicide, making porn movies and juvenile violence.
Juvenile violence poses an increasingly alarming danger to innocent American citizens as they go about their usual patterns of activities every day. The United States Department of Justice reported an increase of 49% in juvenile violent crime arrests over less than a decade and predicted that the number of juveniles who would be taken into legal custody will increase 100% by the year 2010.
There are 5 main causes of juvenile violence in the U.S.:
- The first reason is heredity. According to eminent psychologist Rolf Loeber, “delinquent parents produce delinquent children.” Parental delinquency, similar to diabetes and heart disease, is hereditary. Children of delinquent parents display a strong tendency to indulge in delinquent behavior just as their parents did (Kulla).
- The second reason is the lack of parental attention. Americans are so immersed in their jobs and social lives that they do not find time for their children. Children are permitted to follow any course of action that pleases them and favor the company of any person they fancy: both ideal breeding grounds for juvenile violence. Rolf Loeber sums it well: “Poor parental child-rearing practices cause children to grow up as delinquents” (Kulla).
- The third reason is parental incompatibility. Divorce and separation indicate an absence of love and care for each other on the part of parents. This translates into a lack of parental care for the child, who will have to make do with love, comfort, and guidance from just one parent, while the output of that parent is severely restricted by the trauma of divorce or separation. As a result, the child feels very insecure and is highly susceptible to juvenile violence (Kulla).
- The fourth reason is peer influence. Children are quick and adept at taking up habits from friends and practicing them as their own. In the absence of effective parental guidance and control, children increasingly seek the company of friends. A group of unhappy, dissatisfied, insecure, and unsupervised kids soon form a gang that indulges in socially destructive behavior such as terrorizing streets and intimidating innocent people. In the words of renowned Canadian Professor of Psychology Frank Vitaro, “The peer influence model suggests that ineffective parenting leads to association with deviant friends which in turn leads to delinquency” (Kulla).
- The last reason is social class and race. Children belonging to a low social class do not have the same combination of favorable circumstances or situations that others enjoy. Children of this group do not identify with innocent children of their own age. This forces them to seek the company of others like them, mostly juvenile delinquents themselves. The same argument applies to race. After conducting interviews with more than 500 juvenile delinquents in Pittsburg, Rolf Loeber and fellow psychologist Larry Kalb discovered that 300 were African-American, while 200 belonged to the Caucasian race (Kulla).
Media violence is a factor that heavily contributes to juvenile violence. Due to their high standard of living, electronic appliances like televisions, video game equipment, personal computers, and hi-fi sets are widely used in American homes, thereby laying a solid foundation for the influence from media violence. A large amount of research done on the subject has proven that media violence does have a great deal of influence on juvenile behavior. To quote a research expert, “to argue against it [media influence on juveniles], is like arguing against gravity”.
In the U.S., television has been identified as the source of at least 10% of juvenile violence. 85% of American homes have at least 2 television sets. Half of all American children have their own rooms and their own television sets. It is estimated that by the time an American child reaches the age of 18, he or she will have viewed television films and programs that contain at least 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of aggression resulting in injuries or destruction.
Aggressive video games have the same power to influence children as aggressive television programs and films. Some experts contend they have a more malicious effect. One such expert quipped, “We’re not just teaching kids to kill. We’re teaching them to like it”.
The music retains a unique position in the hearts and minds of young people, and American kids are no exception. Modern western music lyrics are heavily steeped in sex, drugs, and aggression against women. For example, the song ‘Big Man with a Gun’ by the rock group Nine Inch Nails reveals in describing a sexually violent act conducted at gunpoint. Another example is the song lyrics of singer Marilyn Mansion that contain the lines ‘who says date rape isn’t kind?’ and ‘the housewife I will beat, the pro-life I will kill.’ Young Americans free from parental control or supervision can easily be led astray by the messages in such music to indulge in improper or excessive use of drugs and sex-role formulaic conceptions that could spawn risk-taking actions including the ultimate, most unfortunate indiscretion – suicide.
Given the wide prevalence of personal computers in American homes, the Internet is posing an increasing source of juvenile violence. Children have easy access to aggression in the form of words, images, and music on the Internet. It is estimated that websites supporting pervasive hate, intolerance, and aggression number more than 1,000.
In conclusion, it must be said that juvenile violence is an ever-spreading blot on U.S. society and culture. Colorado Governor Bill Owens’ sage words sums the current scenario perfectly: “A ‘virus’ is loose within our culture and that virus is attacking America’s youth, our nation’s most vulnerable and precious treasure” (Indiana.edu). The alarming, rising trend of juvenile violence in the U.S. needs to be controlled and radically reduced in a hurry in the interest of the country’s future.
References
“Children, Violence and the Media.” 2007. Web.
Kulla, Cody. “The Causes of Juvenile Delinquency.” Associated Content. 2006. Web.
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