When I get up in the morning I turn on the television in the living room, and guess what is on? A morning talk show. For the five minutes I watch, the dirt always comes. There is always something negative about someone. In my opinion, what is shown, discussed and heard on the television is getting too inappropriate.
Writer Abigail Vaughn
There are more babies coming into the world. Teenage girls are getting pregnant more and more. Some of the influences on young people today are coming from soap operas or shows like “American Dad,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Family Guy,” and many more. Kids watch and imitate the behavior they see.
Most real dads are not trying to be disgusting when they have a family to support. They are worried about what they will do with this week’s pay or are looking for a job. Some parents see these shows and they may go out and do these bad behaviors as on the television show without even thinking that their children will do the same because they think it is normal behavior.
Now that I am in middle school, I usually get my homework done by 4:30 or 5 p.m. Starting at 6, a lot of inappropriate shows begin. Kids my age should not be watching these shows. When parents let kids watch inappropriate shows, they are telling kids it is okay to do these bad and disgusting behaviors. Why are we letting kids watch these types of television shows? Why are adults watching these television shows?
What people may or may not know is that when kids watch these shows they might learn behavior that parents do not want their kids to know about until they are older and more mature. Teenagers are getting more and more influenced. What are these influences leading to? More teenage girls are finding out they are going to be a mom and more teenage boys are either questioning or know for a fact that they are going to be a dad. Some of the babies go up for adoption or the teenagers decide to keep the babies or they have an abortion.
Sometimes when children want to watch appropriate shows like “Dora” or “Caliou,” they turn on the television and it is in the middle of a soap opera. The child sees a guy making a girl cry and the girl slaps the guy. The child may think that is the ways to solve the problems. If parents go off to work and a child my age wants to watch television from noon to 2 p.m., there is nothing to watch but soap operas.
We are getting more R-rated movies and shows. Why aren’t we getting more family movies and shows? When we flip the channels, we stop at an evening talk show they say “she did this” and “yuck, he did that.” We get gossip in magazines about people’s personal business.
When we watch and hear our media, it is all about problems. We hear this negativity about our country, and this negativity about our city, and this negativity about us. When we get our newspaper it is even disturbing to look at the sports section. In the newspaper, lots of people, even the world’s role models, are showing stupid behaviors that get them in trouble.
We should be seeing and hearing about positive behavior.
Sincerely,
Abigail Vaughn
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of several letters of opinion written for WNLP by students in teacher Jen Sass’s sixth-grade class at Boston Middle School.
