The Impact of Media on Children

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The Impact of Media on Children

Stan, Kyle, Catman and Kenny - four-foul mouthed third graders who abuse each other and find delight in making fun of authority figures. Yet they possess a dumb innocence that makes their bad behavior forgivable to anyone with an honest memory of their childhood. Most parents do not approve of the bleepable expletives that fly out of the kids mouths on ‘South Park’ or the fact that Kenny dies violently in every episode. A lot of people want shows like this to be censored or taken off of the air. Parents try to shelter their children too much. They should let them experience life in the real world and not censor everything that they disagree with.

Some shows can and cannot be shown on television because of their content and some parents want select shows off of the air because of their language, violence and profanity, but we as individuals should be able to choose what shows we want to watch.

Television networks have a hard time deciding what shows they want to put on the air. They have to put a lot of thought into picking the correct shows to draw in the attention of the viewer. They first have to realize what type of audience they want to have. If it is a network like Nickelodeon, then they will want to look for something a child would be entertained by. If it is ESPN, then they would want something that the sports fanatic would love. Another point that they want to have in a good show is how it relates to reality. Every television show needs some reality. If the show’s content is meant to be able to happen in real life, then it should look realistic. If the age group will relate to the show’s topic is also put into consideration(Nesbit).

Networks also have to figure out if the show is useable or not by seeing how much violence, language and profanity. Again they have to consider the show’s target audience. There wouldn’t be the same amount of violence allowed to be shown on ‘Barney’ as there would be allowed on ‘America’s Most Wanted.’

Television has now put a rating on TV shows. It is based on the same principal that the rating system of movies is. In movie theaters, G means the movie is suitable for all ages, PG means some material is not suitable for pre-teenagers and parental guidance is suggested, PG-13 means that parents should be strongly cautioned to give special viewing guidance to those under the age of ...

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...not be able to prohibit the viewing of certain shows. Parents should be the ones making the decision of their child’s viewing. Even if the networks do censor shows, doing so will not make a big difference on anyone’s life. If parents want to keep their children innocent then they will never be able to see the light of day because there is violence happening around us at all times.

In the First Amendment, there are five freedoms mentioned: exercise of religion, press, assembly, petition to the government, and speech. If they censor television, then they are breaking that amendment by not letting everyone have freedom of speech (Nesbit).

We cannot protect all of the children in the world by censoring a few television shows. If anyone is at fault for exposing their child to the bad in the world, it is their parents. Remember what the 8 year old said about South Park’s swear words, “My daddy says them every single day” (Newsweek 60). It is the parents’ choice if they want to protect their children from all of the violence and profanity that is out there, it is in no way a choice of television networks. Everyone has a right to speak their minds and not have their thoughts censored.

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