It's not guns or terrorists...it's kids we should be afraid of

originally posted by: EternalSolace

Wouldn't a better option be to address how over worked we are as a society?

Totally agree, but just take a look at the responses to that suggestion in some of the recent threads, people actually believe we should work harder for less! and they believe that because they watch television.

Television really is the BIG evil, almost every human being on the planet spends HOURS every day staring at it.

Imagine an alien looking down on earth. He'll see the entire population plug themselves into the box in their homes every day, and he'll see a VERY SMALL group of people controlling whats fed into that box!

originally posted by: matafuchs
What should society do and who do you believe is at fault?

Concentrate on growing or enhancing more leadership qualities within the youth.
The many youthful followers seem to follow the limited amount of leaders (audio/video associated) broadcasted leaders who many are STS or Service To Self Oriented. This in turn is programing the youth to these behaviors of self which inturn reflects in societies acts...

Ex. A musician who can spew more ignorance is accepted over a musician who may produce needed conscious input all because of the amount of followers of the ignorance overshadowing the ability of the non-ignorant.
In movies the best sellers are violent or sex/drama related but the more educational or thought provoking fall to the side. Which encourages the youth to follow these violent trends. not saying these are the only causes but they do take primary positions when programing the youth subconsciousness.

Who is to blame? The adults of the species affected for allowing what generates more $$$ the violence/sex/drama sensory input programs instead of maturing and accepting that yes money is generated for a few but many get affected negatively. rooting $$$ again to evol acts.

Not saying they don't exist but can you name internally as many action/violent film - movie/music stars that remain relevant to non violent thought provoking music/movie stars who are just as paid and famous? There is a reason for that which signifies the cultures behavior / interest level being cored around money... As the species overall matures past money perhaps some of the issues with the teens will be eliminated.

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Parents are so overworked they cannot tend their children.

What, so overworked they cannot switch the TV off and insist that child either does schoolwork, or assist with chores in the house, like doing the dishes as parent cooks the tea after a hard day at work?
What about the millions funded on a par by UK benefits to do nothing, compared with hardworking parents on minimum wage?
Why are the kids on 'benefits street' often so unruly and watching TV when the parent doesn't even work?
Put 40 hours a week into interacting with a child and that would improve their behaviour,
Lame, always looking to blame something else when it is the parent at fault.

It does start at a young age though, like the brats I see being shouted at in the supermarket by scummy parents who swear at them to behave. Yes, there are 2nd and 3rd generations now of crap parents, so in some senses their failure at parenting now is the result of their crap parents before them. Either way it is still the parents fault.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Parents are so overworked they cannot tend their children.

What, so overworked they cannot switch the TV off and insist that child either does schoolwork, or assist with chores in the house, like doing the dishes as parent cooks the tea after a hard day at work?
What about the millions funded on a par by UK benefits to do nothing, compared with hardworking parents on minimum wage?
Why are the kids on 'benefits street' often so unruly and watching TV when the parent doesn't even work?
Put 40 hours a week into interacting with a child and that would improve their behaviour,
Lame, always looking to blame something else when it is the parent at fault.

It does start at a young age though, like the brats I see being shouted at in the supermarket by scummy parents who swear at them to behave. Yes, there are 2nd and 3rd generations now of crap parents, so in some senses their failure at parenting now is the result of their crap parents before them. Either way it is still the parents fault.

I wish I was more articulate because your post is just so typical of someone who's spent their life being filled with bs from the television!!!
You use the term 'benefits street'
For those that dont know, thats a TV program being shown on british TV at prime time, to instill the nonsense thats just been echoed above.

Go back to your tv, you'll find people there that think just like you do.

a reply to: VoidHawk
Yep, your argument would be just a bit more effective if you could articulate your points instead of making assertions about my TV viewing habits.
Now, can you stick to the point and explain why kids in houses where no-one works are forced to watch TV?
The millions out of work are not 'overworked' as you stated so what ya gonna blame now?
Can't afford some second hand Lego or a 99 pence football to play with their kids?
So busy spending 8 hours a day looking for work that they have no time for parenting?

Who's fault in an unemployed parent household? Laziness in most cases.

These are very good comments but one I have always also thought about was SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder and the affect on kids and teens. The Pineal gland is associated with this as it controls the release of serotonin and could affect those on MAOIs.

These kids are not outside anymore. They are stuck inside playing videogames, or watching TV or texting. Not outside. Even in schools, they rarely let kids out by banning recess or telling them they do not have to attend PE. The brooding teen who stays in his room all day....

The human body needs sun or what is gives us, which is Vitamin D. Combine this with someone who has a true bipolar disorder or another type of anti-social behaviour and it can be amplified.

These kids were also brought up on low vitamin enriched processed or fast foods.

It is not just the parents or the TV, it is the controlled environment these kids are thrust into I believe.

Any thoughts on this?

a reply to: grainofsand

It's not just in unemployed households that this takes place. It most definitely occurs in households where both, or one, parent is employed.

a reply to: EternalSolace
I agree, I've always worked, and at times in minimum wage drudgery, but I always took time with my son after work/school, help with homework, cook tea together then football at a park or whatever.
Poverty is NOT to blame. I spent 6 months dirt poor in a single room bedsit sharing bunk beds with my son when he was little. We still played together and did things together, and he was never dumped in front of a TV because of laziness on my part.

I think those blaming the TV are kind of brainwashed themselves...parents control how much TV is watched, not the children.

a reply to: grainofsand

I believe the parents are at fault as well. However, laziness on the part of parents isn't the whole story. There are people who literally work themselves to death in order to provide for their family. That's what I'm getting at. Our priorities are so messed up, we allow for others to go through 80+ hour workweeks with nothing to show for it.

We need to move away from being such a work driven society.

I'm not afraid of guns.
I'm not afraid of terrorists.
And I'm not about to start being afraid of kids either.

I think you guys are watching too much CNN.
Apparently, the propaganda of a fear-driven society seems to be winning the battle.

originally posted by: grainofsand


I think those blaming the TV are kind of brainwashed themselves...parents control how much TV is watched, not the children.

So you accept that people can be brainwashed, good!

Take for instance those programs telling parents they should "Just leave their babies to cry themselves to sleep", what affect do you imagine thats having on those babies? and what about the parents who follow such advice, what do they pick up from it?
I agree that many parents are indirectly to blame, because they could do a lot more, but the reason they dont is because they've been brainwashed, they're too involved with their "reality" tv! and too involved in letting their tv guide them through life, and the reason they do this is because the tv has brainwashed them into thinking that its just fine to live that way.

Television could so easily be used to brainwash them into doing whats right, but it doesn't, it fills their heads with nonsense! and they end up spewing sentences like

Why are the kids on 'benefits street' often so unruly and watching TV when the parent doesn't even work?

when the truth is, unruly children come from ALL classes, not just the unemployed!!!

a reply to: EternalSolace
I agree, but I was aiming my points at VoidHawk's lame claims that it is the TV to blame and all the poor overworked parents simply have no other option than to dump their kids in front of it.
Here in the UK we have exceptionally generous benefits for parents in or out of work, and when I worked as a debt advisor with the major advice charity in this country about 1% of of clients were in a position where their own stupid choices were not to blame for their 'poverty'
90% plus had multiple iPhone contracts for both parents and kids, massive expensive satelite TV subscriptions, and high clothing budgets. It was even better when looking through bank statements as the card purchases never lie, Chinese takeaways, pizza deliveries, etc.

I resigned when I eventually realised that MOST people I dealt with had themselves to blame, and I stopped caring for such people anymore.

Parenting is down to effort and hard work in most cases - if someone cannot do it then they shouldn't have had kids, but as I say, in the UK the child/housing benefits are at a level that some young people even make a financial choice to have a kid so they don't have to work.

I sympathise with the extreme example you have suggested, but yeah, lets blame the TV, as that's easier.
Most crap parents in my country are just that, crap and lazy.

a reply to: VoidHawk
Interesting, but you still haven't explained why parents out of work dump their kids in front of the TV when they have the time to play and educate them, and then if said TV has taught the kids to be violent rapists or whatever as you claim, how is that not the fault of the parent who controls access to the TV by the child?

You're original point was for the 'overworked' parents so I countered it by asking about the millions of kids in homes where no-one works. Please do explain your theory about them?

a reply to: CranialSponge

The title is sarcasm. The issue is real. This did not happen as often in the years past as it has in the last 20. There has always been evil and that can explain a lot. People can be crazy. I am simply trying to broach the topic of why is it happening at such an alarming rate now and so violent.

a reply to: VoidHawk

Stop blaming parents, start blaming the television.

What?

Who raises the kids? Who allows them to watch hours of TV? Really?

That's a cop out. A TV has yet to instill a concept of good and evil upon anyone. That's the people in their lives, not an inanimate object.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

The other, I suppose 'Politically Incorrect', cause of the uptick in teen violence has been the advancement of the zero tolerance movement through the progressive-run schools and programs.

The basis of the theory behind zero tolerance programs can actually be traced back to two conservatives, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, and this article, enttitled Broken Windows.

I'm not a supporter of zero tolerance programs in relation to anything but weapons. I got in my fair share of fist fights throughout school and I agree that these things are a result of normal human development and that nobody, least of all children, benefits from overreaction.

The assumed uptick in violence committed by teens is due to a false perception created by fear mongering by the media and politicians. Trying to establish a correlation to zero tolerance programs which gained popularity after a purported uptick in school violence, doesn't seem a worthwhile endeavor.

My point is that as with other issues that are overblown by media and political fear mongering, we're constantly looking to assign blame for a "problem" that is either actually in steep decline or wasn't ever significant enough to warrant the disproportionate focus placed on it.

For instance, here's the data from the CDC on homicide rates:

source - CDC

Similar declines can be seem across a spectrum of violent crimes. Violent crime is down but it's constantly politicized and exaggerated by both the left and the right to justify policy positions and score political points. We don't have a growing crime problem, we have an out of control fear mongering epidemic.

a reply to: theantediluvian
I think that zero tolerance is silly when it comes to weapons.
To expel a kid from school for drawing a picture of a gun seems a lot like book burning to me.

To penalize a kid for eating a toaster pastry the wrong way (making it look like a gun before it has been fully consumed) is just plain nuts.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Fact is, Homicide is STILL the leading cause of death in that age bracket. Something is wrong.

Homicide remains a leading cause of death among youth aged 10–24 years in the United States. Violence is also a major cause of nonfatal injuries among youth. In 2011, more than 700,000 young people aged 10–24 years were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries sustained from assaults.

The information you are stating is also teen deaths, not teens committing homicide against adults, etc.

originally posted by: matafuchs
a reply to: theantediluvian

Fact is, Homicide is STILL the leading cause of death in that age bracket. Something is wrong.

Homicide remains a leading cause of death among youth aged 10–24 years in the United States. Violence is also a major cause of nonfatal injuries among youth. In 2011, more than 700,000 young people aged 10–24 years were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries sustained from assaults.

The information you are stating is also teen deaths, not teens committing homicide against adults, etc.

From the same CDC source (pulling from FBI crime statistics):

For persons ages 10 to 24 years, violent crime arrest rates were higher for males than for females from 1995-2011. For males ages 10 to 24 years, violent crime arrest rates declined from 850.8 arrests per 100,000 population in 1995 to 423.1 arrests per 100,000 in 2011. For females ages 10 to 24 years, violent crime arrest rates declined from 139.6 arrests per 100,000 in 1995 to 99.7 arrests per 100,000 in 2011.

There's no statistical measure that shows anything but a sustained decline in violent crime across all age groups. You're also wrong about homicide being the leading cause of death in that age group.

Here are the 2010 statistics for ages 10-24 reported in 2013 by the CDC:

13,226 - Unintentional Injury
4,867 - Suicide
4,828 - Homicide
2,091 - Malignant Neoplasms (cancer)
1,145 - Heart disease

Somewhere around 70% of the unintentional injury deaths are from automobile accidents.

source 1
source 2

I'm not downplaying the significance of these homicides. 1 homicide is too many, but my position is there exists a popular misconception that the US is experiencing an increase in youth violence. It's simply not true. There has been a marked decrease.

I think that zero tolerance is silly when it comes to weapons.
To expel a kid from school for drawing a picture of a gun seems a lot like book burning to me.

To penalize a kid for eating a toaster pastry the wrong way (making it look like a gun before it has been fully consumed) is just plain nuts.

I agree and I should have been more specific. I was referring to possession of actual weapons (guns, tasers, knives, batons, brass knuckles, explosives, etc). Actually, your point is valid — zero tolerance policies are inherently flawed and should be completely replaced with policies that make more sense and allow for administrators to retain a reasonable level of discretion.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Well something is afoot because I quoted the CDC information in that post that shows Murder is the leading cause of death in that age group. Read the first paragraph. Does that mean we should not believe since there are contradictory statements?

Link

According to this stat, suicide is 3. So go figure.

Link

Aside from this, as you said and what I am trying to discern, is why? Not how many. One is too many. One kid killing his parents with a hammer or 5 kids doing it does not matter. It is the fact that it happens.

I really wanted some opinions and try to have not a statistical/fear mongering discussion as much as one on how the world can work to stop a trend of violence which although it dropped for years is now on the rise again.