4. October 2009 by student.

Everywhere we look today, we are bombarded with models on billboards, magazines with the latest outfit we should purchase, and quick ways to loose weight.  Our society is becoming filled with these images of how we should look or how we should be perceived.  Hollywood and the media is becoming more popular among children and teenagers.  Teenagers are watching shows like CSI, One Tree Hill, and MTV’s Made.  These shows are enabling our children to quickly mature and have them make adult decisions, which in return, cause for adult consequences.  In Hollywood and Society, author Douglas Kellner states, ” Movies were a central focus of leisure and activity and deeply influenced how people talked, looked, and acted, causing a major force of enculturation.”  Movies have a vital role on today’s society and how people are viewed.  Our minds are filled with images of rape, torture, kidnapping, murder, perfect bodies, love, liars, and cheaters.  Whether we expect to or not, we automatically stereotype certain people due to the images Hollywood prescribes to us. We are drawn to the accounts Hollywood has because they appeal to us and we feel as if we can connect with their meaning.  I feel that Hollywood as a whole, has too much of an affect on our society.  Instead of figuring problems out on our own, we automatically are drawn to what happens in the movies or what our idols are doing.  Kellner writes, “In order to resonate to audience fears, fantasies, and experiences, the Hollywood genres had to deal with the central conflicts and problems in U.S. society, and had to offer soothing resolutions, assuring its audiences that all problems could be solved within existing institutions.”  Hollywood tries to assure its audiences that civilization can still be maintained through any possible threat.  Hollywood and the media plays a very vital, yet injuring role to our society because it blinds us of our problems and takes us away from reality.

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4. October 2009 by student.

Why is it that when we see someone abusing an animal we are quick to call the appropriate authorities, but when we suspect, or  even witness,  that a child is or has been abuse we tell ourselves, “it’s not our business how someone else disciplines their child/ren”.  How many stories have we read or watched on television where some neighbor stated: “they did find it odd that the children were never outside”  or  “they didn’t know any children lived next door to them”.  Gone are the days when you knew your neighbor and they knew you.  In 2006, fifteen hundred of the 800,000 cases reported resulted in the death of a child.  These abuse cases range from physical, sexual, emotional and neglect.  How could so many children have been so abused that they were killed, yet no one intervened?   Recent statistics show that there were approximately 906,000 cases of child abuse in the United States.  Direct expenses, such as case management, mental health care, law enforcement, foster care, hospitalization totaled $33 billion dollars.  How is it that we have the tax dollars to continually beautify our city yet our child protection agencies are severely understaffed?   Child abuse is a social problem that expands generations with long range effects.  As adults these children suffer from long-term psychological and emotional problems such as substance abuse, depression, suicide, aggression and criminal behavior. It would be fair to say then that the long range cost to society is far more than the direct cost during childhood.  It would also be fair to say that the key to this socially debilitating problem can be found in prevention.

Matthew W.  Stagner and Jiffy Lansing, “Progress toward a Prevention Perspective”

The Future of Children, Princeton-Brookings, “ Social Science Rising: A Tale of Evidence Shaping Public Policy.

http://helpguide.org/mental/child_abuse_physical_emotional_ sexual_neglect.htm

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