We’ve all hear the saying ” back in my day…” but has anyone really thought about it? the times have changed dramatically, if you were to compare a child of today to a child of the 50’s, they would seem like two different species, but why? there are MANY different theories about this.
The most popular answer to this question seems to be, media, whether it be television, movies, music, and of course video games. A person merely needs to look at t.v. guide to see the quality of television that we as people are watching, from the violence of news, the drama of reality shows, and the sex which seems to be in almost every program not rated G, you know what they say, violence and sex sells, which is true, it seems that human have a lust for gore and sex, but why? I don’t think anyone can really answer this, but because we love it, so will our children, the fascination that we have with a car wreck(the reason we slow down to watch) will be passed down to the younger generations. Now these show do have a rating on them, yes they are intended for young adults and adults, but that does not mean that younger children are not watching too. In movies, it is pretty much the same, drugs, sex and violence, and of course the “colorful” language, these also have rating on them, but younger children are still watching that too. The music that children listen to have pretty much the same problems, some of the artists even go as far as to glorify their criminal doings, and of course music is also rated for age. One of the biggest scapegoats for why children act the way they do and live in “thier own world” is video games, there are many types of games, the role playing games, which allow you to create a world all of your own, first person shooter, which allow you to run around and shoot “bad guys”. There are also many educational games, which teach reading, writing, spelling and math as well.
So back to the original question, why are children losing touch with reality? going over the main blame of media, it would seem to make sense but the people that publish these things go through precautions to make sure that young children don’t see it, there is only so much that they can do, once it is on the shelves or in peoples homes, its out of their hands. There is no real answer to this question, but media does seem to have a huge impact on children, the only thing we can do is try to prevent it, by education of the product, monitoring time spent with the product, or in some cases, just plain saying “no you can’t watch/play that because its not age appropriate”
