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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

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Consume with care

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Perhaps being cool has taken on a new meaning in schools these days.

If you want to show off, beat someone up. If you want to really show off, film yourself beating someone up.

Last week in Delaware, for example, two teenage boys beat up a 26-year-old with Williams syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, while another filmed it.

This phenomenon may be an extension of neglected children acting out, but if you’re like most parents wondering where kids get such ideas, it really isn’t a ?confounding question.

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the typical American child will view more than 200,000 acts of violence, including 16,000 murders, before the age of 18. 

Along with a slew of other factors during early development, these random acts of violence may be the result of unrefined consumption of prolonged media exposure.

The violence is here to stay: ratings are just too good. And we can’t un-see terrible things for kids who watch too much television unaccompanied. But we can teach children to be media literate.

Media literacy is pretty much what it sounds like: an understanding of the pallete media conglomerates use to paint what could easily be perceived as reality.

In laymen’s terms, it means not taking what you see for face value.

This literacy can be applied to advertisements, movies, news, video games, magazines and any other representation designed to engage us.

The American Psychological Association warns of prolonged exposure to media violence, as it increases the likelihood of children becoming less sensitive to the pain of others and more fearful of the world conceptually.

We can stimulate the discussion of placing media-related events into context so that kids will not only have a greater understanding of the world around them but also know better how to interact with it.

If we can encourage kids to ask more permeating questions, like what economic and cultural factors play into a small-town riot or why a nation would hope to secede from another, then the media consumed has a better chance of being humanized and thus attributed a value of its own.

Many news outlets make weak attempts at humanizing a story.

Normally they’ll pull someone from a crowd and record their general reaction, which barely suffices in presenting the range of emotions felt in that instance.

These outlets realize that the attention span of the average viewer is quite brief, so context is sacrificed for fast-paced, superficial coverage.

Media literacy has yet to become a topic of study in primary school but, as relatives and friends, we can accompany kids’ viewing of television and Internet to give them something that all kids need: guidance and perspective.

It’s common knowledge how innately sponge-like kids are, so limiting the amount and access to media violence they have in those first precious, care-free years may make all the difference.

Desensitization to violence may be inevitable, but children have the right to be kept from such emotional apathy until they come of age.

The 14-year-old who filmed his two friends beating up someone with Williams syndrome turned himself in and identified his friends.

Think of how many kids know better but succumb to peer pressure in the heat of the moment and are forced to grapple with consequences they can’t understand.

Our generation has a responsibility that our parents never had. The Internet provides access to an unlimited array of wonderful and awful things.

That degree of accessibility comes with an implicit ?responsibility to view and publish with care.

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