The Violent Children of Our Violent Society

Cities of violence: Santee, California; El Cajon, California; Littleton, Colorado.

These are names of American cities and towns where violence has usurped deep into the

American heartland where families settle to raise families away from the violent big

cities. Andy Williams, Jason Hoffman, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold; names of

students who came to their schools with weapons to kill those students and staff whom

they felt were responsible for their melancholy. What are the motivating factors behind

these suicidal attempts?

Society is trying to convince itself that it must be Hollywood with its violent

entertainment and glorification of violence. Another scapegoat is videogames with all the

gore and realistic killing or maybe even music that has lyrics considered by the majority

to be riddled with suicidal or homicidal messages to today’s youth. Politicians, parents,

law enforcement, and society are asking themselves, “What are the factors leading to the

increase in violence among our children?”. The most convincing causes for

violence in our children lies not in the entertainment industry but in us. The main

source is depression of the killers due to rejection by their peers, the breakdown of the

cohesive family unit due to divorce and the easy accessibility to weapons.

The major cause of violence believed by some researchers is the age-old traditions of bullying and the clique system in high schools. Jerry Adler states in his 1999 article The Truth About High School that these are so called “rights of passages” that all American students have been exposed too. “These factors have been around since the invention of high school and adolescents have been forming cliques and mentally ranking them just as in an adult society [which are] dominated by hierarchies” (Adler 56).

As in most high schools across the country the athletes dominate the social scale and enforce the hierarchy, which explains why they are at the top of the food chain. “It’s pretty common to see jocks picking on the fat kid or the wimpy kid, or anybody who’s different” (Adler 56). So what provokes aggression and violence among the lower hierarchical levels? Often it is scapegoating, in which teens are bullied by and in front of their peer group by a higher hierarchical group, leaving them excluded and humiliated. In an online survey conducted by the San Diego Tribune statistics show that “87 percent of students thought that school shooters were motivated by a desire to get back at those who have hurt them and 86 percent said teenagers resort to violence because of other kids picking on them, making fun of them or bullying them” (Eckert 2).