The negative influent that the American media has on the psyche of Essay

The negative influent that the American media has on the psyche of American teenagers in terms of violence amoung teens - Essay Example â€Å"An increasing number of public and private school administrators face situations involving serious violence perpetrated by and against adolescents. School officials are responding by adding violence prevention programs-often a commercially available ‘off-the-shelf’ package-to their schools already overcrowded curricula† (Posner,1998). There are many programs designed to fight the effects of media violence in the US on teens, and in other ways decrease violent behavior. These programs are distinct logarithms enforced by institutional and extra-institutional (sometimes political) interests, and they have not always been seen to be successful. In many cases, these programs are not specifically tailored towards the usually-small percentage of students who have problems with gang violence or are carrying weapons, and instead wind up cultivating student paranoia and negative involvement. Often, students are even profiled by these programs in terms of their style of dress or speech, and this may create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which students are seen to embrace the type of behavior attributed to them by gang violence prevention programs. Looking at media in the US and the relationship to youth violence, it has been stated that, â€Å"violence often results from a complex interaction of environmental, social, and psychological factors such as the learned behavior of responding to conflict with violence, the effects of drugs or alcohol, the presence of weapons, the absence of positive family relationships and adult supervision† (Posner, 1998). Not all of the reasons may be due to the media: many students who do not have positive family relationships and structured time under supervision during their hours away from school may see that by pursuing positive extracurricular activities that accentuate their futures rather than throwing their futures away by indulging in patterns of gang membership