What is the cause of violence today? Is it the environment your in? Is it the way you were brought up? Or is it the media? In this essay I will try to explain why I think the media has a huge impact of violence on the life of people today. Most children begin to watch TV probably around preschool age taking an exploration approach to it. Children try to connect and relate to Cartoon Characters and are attracted to the intense sounds and sights and quick movements that are featured in Cartoons. Many of these programs, such as Bugs Bunny and Pals and Tom & Jerry Kids seems to contain more violence than some adult programs. After watching violence on TV children are more sensitive to violent acts due to the fact that they are in the early stages of development.
TV violence often misleads young people. Children are affected by the outright amount of violence on TV. Possibly even more damaging is the false messages that TV violence sends. Violence is often rewarded and rarely has negative consequences. For example in Zipping Along featuring the Roadrunner and the coyote the violence of the coyote is almost always self-inflicting one of the many flavors of violence in children's programs, but he is never seen experiencing any mental or physical distress. Most of the victims of cartoon violence experience no visible pain and the perpetrators often go unpunished in violent scenes on TV. Violence is everywhere on TV. Violence in these TV programs is justified. The "hero" of the show commits almost all of the violence on TV. The "good guy" is seldom punished; even the "bad guys" are punished only some of the time. For example, on the popular children's cartoon, Power Rangers, they teach children that violence is not only justified, but heroic too. Violence is also often portrayed as funny.
Children often relate with one of the characters on these cartoons. This response depends on which character the child can identify with the most.
