Violence Among Children

4 Pages 1027 Words

Violence among children, especially teenagers, has become a disturbing trend these days. It seems there is a school shooting on the news every other week. Parents have blamed the violence on television’s glorification of bloodshed and sex, the lyrics from some rap artist or rock group and games that promote violence. They have blamed everyone and everything other than themselves. Teenage violence has reached unimaginable heights, not because of the media but because of the lack of parental intervention at home.
Crimes committed in the past do not seem as widespread compared to crimes in the present. Every year it seems violence in children is more prevalent.

Each year in the United States, at least 1000 individuals
below the magic “adult” age of 18 years are jailed for acts
of homicide. In most years, since the 1980’s, there have
been significantly more, 1500 young killers and up. By
1999, it seemed impossible to finish out a school year
without three or four reported massacres on scattered
campuses, and murders in the home…were numbingly routine
(Newton 1).

For example, on April 21, 1999, two high school students committed an incomprehensible crime. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who belonged to a group dubbed “the Trench Coat Mafia”, went into their high school, killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives. Crimes of similar fashion have been occurring all over the United States and as a society we have yet to come up with a logical reason as to why this happens.
Parents are constantly displacing the responsibility of the actions of their children. Placing the blame on music, television and games have done nothing to solve this problem. Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold said it best with an email that was sent to the local police the days before the Columbine High School massacre. “Surely you will try to blame it on the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, or the w...