In his essay "Stop Blaming Kids and TV,"" Mike Males argues that too much blame is being pinned on violence rates and how they are caused by teenagers and television. Males finds that TV violence bears little influence on the behavior of teens and the real influence is in adults. He continues by saying that teens imitate the behavior of adults and offers evidence to back up his claim. Males' opinions regarding television and teen violence are completely valid in that he utilizes strategies such as offering negative evidence and rigid statistics. Males begins by saying that kids imitate their elders and they are not influenced by the television. He then proceeds to offer examples of conservatives and liberals who blame the violence rate on the tube. Males provides many statistics to defend his thesis claiming that most violence is learned and enacted in the home. He also presents proof that parents pose a bigger threat to children and teens than that of commercials depicting smoking as cool or television shows glorifying violence.
A useful strategy that Males employs is offering evidence that contradicts his point and then he proves the previous evidence obsolete with new and better proof to establish that television is not the leading cause of violence in teens. For example he cites a statistic from the Institute of Alternative Media saying that the average child sees an average of 200,000 violent acts on television by the time they are 18. He then goes on to present startling household violence statistics along with child abuse and child murder statistics. These examples are particularly effective in disproving that violence is caused by television. Males pokes fun at authors who are in favor of the claim that television actually causes real life brutality. Susan Lamson, author of "TV Violence: Does it Cause Real Life Mayhem?"" states in her essay that "a recent TV Guide study counted 1,845 act of violence in eighteen hours of viewing time, an average of 100 violent acts per hour, or one every thirty six seconds"" (Lamson 256).