Violence Among American Youths Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Violence Among American Youths - Essay Example ates, homicide resulting from violence committed by or suffered by the youth has been identified as being identified as the second leading cause of death among American people aged between 15-24 years old. The increasing violence has also been identified as having a number of negative economic effects on the country’s economy. By exploring the different causes and effects of increasing levels of violence among the youth and children, this paper will seek to show that increasing violence among children and youth across the entire United States is having an adversely negative impact on the country’s economy. Media Exposure and Aggressive and Violent Behavior: There has been an intensely raging debate over the years as to the extent to which media violence has served to contribute as a major cause of children and youth violence and aggression. The exposure youth and children in the United States get to violent media has been noted to be extremely high. Different bodies have presented reports and advisories against media violence but these have largely been ignored. Some of these bodies include the AMA and the APA (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson, 2008). There have been numerous empirical studies conducted that have been able to establish links between aggression and media violence. These studies have all managed to reach the conclusion that media violence definitely increases aggressive behavior among youth and children. Poor Parenting: Various aspects of parenting have been identified as possibly contributing to the increased violent behavior among children and youth in the United States. These include poor supervision, parental disharmony in the home, limited involvement by parents in a child’s activities such as school plays and games, erratic and harsh discipline as well as the rejection of a child (Seifert, Ray & Schmidt, 2012). The effect of these poor parenting traits is that parents who exhibit these behaviors often tend to engage in various parent-child