The media clearly has an impact on our lives and especially on the young and weak-minded people in our society. Children become desensitized to violence when they see it everyday on television, in theaters and even in video games. They see no difference between what is real, what is not, and the effects of it all. Even TV news deadens one's perception of reality. People of all ages, especially those who are at an impressionable time in their lives, need to know that murder, death and violence are real and that sadness comes with all of these.

The American media is the most violent in the world. Children in America are more likely to be shot than in any other country. The human brain is the most delicate and complex mechanism in all creation (Cousins). This delicate mechanism especially in children absorbs violence quickly. With a significant number of studies supporting the causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children, we know the more life-like the violence depicted the more likely it will be learned (Buchanan). More than a half of children's programs contain violence and one third have nine or more violent portrayals in each episode. M

In our society, television is the main source of news and information, and the main source of entertainment as well. More than 99 percent of U.S. households have at least one television set, and about two- thirds of them have two, three, or more sets (Buchanan). As the number of TV sets in a household has increased, family viewing has declined, and individual program selection and solitary viewing have increased. The average weekly viewing time has increased annually in American households, from 43 hours in the early seventies to 50 hours in the mid-nineties (Buchanan). Studies of younger viewers who daily watch cartoons, police shows, and murder dramas with heavy doses of violence further relate to the potency of TV (Buchanan). Parents may be unaware of the impact television has on their child. Because television acts insidiously to shape viewers' attitudes and perceptions of social norms, parents may underestimate this medium because they know that television is fantasy. They may not recognize that their children lack reasoning abilities and often view the television world as being real and shape their behaviors accordingly.

An appropriate strategy includes having all family members decide on how much television will be viewed and actively selecting the shows with all family members having input. These can be recorded on a calendar. Making deliberate choices about television viewing often reduces the overall amount of television that i

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