Violent Media Is Good For Kids Essay Example
Violent Media Is Good For Kids Essay Example

Violent Media Is Good For Kids Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (1054 words)
  • Published: July 16, 2018
  • Type: Essay
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By Gerard Jones In our class book Practical Argument, I chose “Violent Media is Good for Kids” by Gerard Joneson page 36. In this article Jones states and tries to prove that violent media is undeniably good for children. He challenges this by saying what he believes also how he grew up too passive because he was sheltered from the media. Upon hearing that the media has "lofty messages of pacifism and tolerance" (par. 2), his mother had borrowed some comics for him to read.

After reading the comics, he said that he followed Hulk for a while then switched to "more sophisticated heroes", in (par. 3) and "finally found my own lead along a twisting path to a career and an identity. " (par. 3) Later on, his son was afra

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id to climb a tree, so Jones read the stories of Tarzan to his son. About a week or so, his son was climbing trees. In (par. 4) Jones has given other examples of children who used violent media to overcome their stressful and hurtful lives.

In modern years, there has been dispute about whether or not children should view, or listen to violent media. In "Violent Media is Good for Kids" Gerard Jones says that we should. "When we try to protect our children from their own feelings and fantasies, we shelter them not against violence but against power and selfhood. " Jones is right to say this; violent media can help kids if it is used in the right way rather than being abused. He does not include statistics to back-up his arguments and that is a downfall

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of Jones's article.

He does however include examples as to why he believes that violent media is good for children. His examples maybe far-fetched, but when you think about it, he has a good point violent media is good for kids if used in a specific aspect. Therefore, instead of trying to keep the kids away from the media we should teach them how to use it correctly so that it is productive rather than destructive. Many children will grow up like Jones and find themselves in the real world and know who they are if they were allowed access to the media.

Jones admits that violent media is not harmless and that it does inspire some children into doing real life violence, but goes on to say that it has helped more than it has harmed. Like Jones mentions before, "When we try to protect our children from their own feelings and fantasies, we shelter them not against violence but against power and selfhood. " I know, from personal understanding, that when you grow up fearing to express your feelings because you are afraid that you are going to get in trouble either at home or at school, you bottle everything up inside you and do not let go of it easily.

Its common knowledge that if you bottle something up for too long it is either going to come out somehow, whether you want it to or not. So with this said, we all care for the children and how they behave. We all want the children to do well, and if teaching them to value and appropriately use violent

media to help build up confidence then so be it. While it gives the impression that Gerald Jones could be wrong in his arguments, there is an aspect of truth at least from his case studies he took in his research.

In addition, while no one would support exposure of the young children to violence and violent scenes, not at least in a stable civilization like America, it is quite evident that violent media provides the children and the young people in the society with certain message in life. It becomes clear that the children that Jones took as a sample in his research and presented in the essay are an indication of the contrasting aspects of what our society believes. For illustration, Jones talks of his own childhood life, in which the parents and the teachers instilled fear in him, separating him from the reality and the age mates.

In the name of educating the social ethics and morals in our children, we tend to alleviate them from the reality, which actually makes the children develop a characteristic of poor perception of the reality within their society. Consider the case of Jones in his childhood; the mother and the teachers made hypotheses that the world or rather the society is perfect- that there is no violence, and if it exists, the children should not be confront or made to learn of its existence.

Further, they assumes that the children will never encounter or be tangled in a violent scene, which means that they cannot defend themselves, having been taught to either avoid violence or walk away from the scene. This is

quite wrong because at one time in life, each person is likely to encounter such as scenario, where self-defense or an intervention is necessary. While we may think that Jones is exaggerating his views on his life, there is some truth in that the contemporary world is quite complex, with cases of violence reported each ay in our lives.

According to Jones' article, his efforts to show that the up-to-date form of violence is highly complex, with children taking part in shooting. For illustration, the ever intensifying cases of school and neighborhood shooting is a calling to the parents, teachers and the society to consider other measures of avoiding the excessive loss of life among the kids in such cases. For illustration, it is clear that we cannot assume that by just involving the security to dwindle the children’s access to weapons will solve the issue.

It is important to remember that the children advantage such weapons from the adults, and therefore eliminating the vice is quite challenging and may take timed. Meanwhile, Jones seems to provide an alternative- teaching our children how to solve such cases through the tactics they learn from violent games and media. In this way, the typed self-protection learned from the violent media may prove effective for the children to handle such cases as attempted school and neighborhood violent and shooting.

Works Cited

  1. Laurie G. Kirszner, Stephen R. Mandell. Practical Argument A Text and Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011.
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