Patel 1 Tanvi Patel Ms.Boughton English / 2A 4/26/11 Teen Violence Twelve-year old kills stepmom.

Three kids dead after a drive-by shooting. Local gangs fight in the streets, three bodies found and 8 teen reported injured. What has become of this, our, world? Turn on the television and story after story can be heard of teens and young adults hurting each other, fighting, or killing themselves. This has not always been the case so why now? There is no one problem but there are 3 causes that are at the root of the problem. There are three main causes of violence in teens. The first cause would be parents and the upbringing of the child in general. Another cause is todays teens perception of life. Last but certainly not the least, American society today has a large impact on our teens violent behavior. Violence in teens is a growing problem that must be dealt with. The best and maybe only way to solve this problem is by understanding and addressing the causes. Teenage violence is a large problem and one of the largest causes is the teens parents and his or her upbringing. Love and affection is something that all human beings need. Young children have to rely on their parents for this love and affection. If or when they gain this, they learn to give it to others and so the cycle continues. If this love is not given then this will not only stop the cycle, it will also make the child more likely to exhibit violent behaviors. The American Academy of Pediatrics, It is the attachment to one consistent, warm, loving, and encouraging caregiver that also ensures the development of conscience. (OMarra)Without this person in their lives, when the child grows up, their conscience will be weak. This will make it easier for the teen to make violent decisions. There is no doubt that bullying is a large instigator of violence but it is not a cause. The cause is lack of respect. Teaching a child respect is a

Patel 2 parents responsibility. Todd Strasser believes that violence comes in many forms guns, fists, and words of hate and contempt,(Strasser). Guns, knives, and weapons are not the only or even biggest problem. The real problem is words and peoples treatment of one another. If everyone is taught from a young age to respect others, the violence in teens can be much less. In addition, it is very important for parents to be active in their childrens lives. Parents really have no time for their children in todays world. They dont know what their kids are watching or how bad the videogames they are playing are. Some parents even give their children weapons and teach them how to use them but then they do not go on to secure the item. If parents are not aware of their childs life then how can they stop them from making a horrible decision? Clearly, parents and upbringing are an extremely large cause of violence in teens, today. Teens today have a very different perception of life than those before them and this is another large cause of teenage violence. There are many new things that exist today that did not for the generations before todays teens. This may be one reason why adults do not understand the ways of teens today. Although these new things were meant to better the world, they have also caused more problems. With things like social networking and texting, it has become easy to contact one another and also made it easier to hurt one another. When people, especially teens, get hurt or picked on, their self confidence is hurt. High schools today have a large hand in low self confidence in teens. Leon Botstein also agrees. The artificial environment of our high schools is to blame (OMarra) When teens get hurt daily, they search for a place where they are accepted. Through this search, many are wrongly guided into the streets or gangs. Michelle Stimpson believes that teens today are torn between staying in school and getting an education or turning to the streets and being accepted because those are the only options they see. Those teens feel like they have no other choice because those are the only two options they see either being

Patel 3 loved or getting an education, in other words being happy or living in hell? Which would you choose? The problem is that there is no way for them to see that those are not the only options because that is all they know. The final problem with todays teens perception of life is that violence has become a part of their daily lives. In an average teens life, he/she will smack a person almost every day, usually playfully. If they are joking around with a friend they will say things that may be hurtful without thinking twice. That is just what life for a teen has become. So when this has become a part of their daily life, it is not hard for it to escalate out of control. The real problem is that teens today dont know how dangerously violent they really are. Our American society has really become a large cause of teen violence. Media is influenced by society and it seems to be very clear that violent media is a large contributor of the spread of violence. Teens look up to actors and actresses and when their idols are a part of such violent worlds, it influences their lives and decisions. Furthermore, if you think about how popular video games are and on top of that, how much teens play them, dont you think that this will have an effect on the young adults? One extremely frightening fact is that The average child watches 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television before entering the seventh grade. (OMarra). Another problem with American society is that not only does America have extremely high homicide rate, the American government does very little about it. Sadly, only 15 states in the US have Child Access Prevention laws (CAP). These laws require gun owners living in households with children to store their guns locked and out of reach of children. By contrast, following widespread outrage about March 1995 shooting in Scotland in which 16 were killed, the British government passed a ban on handguns. Clearly, other countries take more steps to prevent fatal teen violence than America. This probably has a lot to do with the next cause, materialism in our society. lets not be nave any longer about the

Patel 4 commercial interests of the gun manufacturers, the tobacco manufacturers, and the advertisers of childrens programming. (OMarra). As Ms.OMarra suggests, our societys companies want money so badly that they have stopped being ethical. Advertising things that are horrible for children to children is extremely unethical. Unfortunately, that is how our society works and this is one of the largest problems that cause teenage violence. In conclusion, there are three very large causes of teenage violence. First is, parents and upbringing. If a childs first few years or first role-models are not good then they already running towards the wrong train. Next is todays teens perception of life. Teens today seem to have their own ideas about life and these perceptions are very misguiding. Last is society. Society influences a lot of things and one of them is the lives of teens. When society is violent, how can teens not be?