Owning a Tamagotchi at the age of nine you were the coolest person ever. It will hang from your backpack when you go to school and everyone who didn't have one would envy you and want one, and those who had one would flaunt it like bling. A Tamagotchi is a portable Japanese "pet" that children "take care of", monitoring the animal's life on a small screen with about three buttons below it. I had one at that age (nine) in 2003, and that was when games for toddlers were actually games for toddlers. Ten years later, my nine-year-old cousin, Isaiah, has no idea the pleasure of caring for a pet in a portable oval-shaped game. Social media, entertainment and advertising today are a lot of fun and no matter how inappropriate they are exposed to younger generations. This is a problem, because when this takes over a child's thoughts and/or life, things are not going to go very well for the child. We should monitor the access that children (including adolescents) have to violent media because it is harmful to the child's mental and social health. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Knowing that there will be questions about how younger generations have access to this inappropriate media and entertainment, here's the simple reason why: It's everywhere! In so many unexpected forms and places that you will never guess. Advertisements for vehicles, electronic devices and video games are violent and are played throughout the TV show, no matter what is on, and this impacts the child's life, both mentally and socially. This is an ongoing problem; here in the United States, where this media is accessible, our American children are captivated by the big lights of social media and entertainment. The presence of this violent media and entertainment replaces what good there might have been in the child's life. My nine year old cousin is a brilliant student but can't express it because of all the distractions. The biggest distraction comes from his video games. What started from Mario Kart to Wrestle Mania, with light games with the older brother and "slapping" on the sofas, has reached Grand Theft Auto, and now my nine-year-old cousin owns Grand Theft Auto IV with the fantastic fantastic imagination is destroying a police car and killing a random person on the street for his car is normal. After school he would turn on the television, plug in the X-Box 360 game console (a Christmas present from his parents), and stay glued to the screen until he was yelled at to go to bed late at night. My uncle and aunt have no idea what games and media can do for their children. When we confront the parents, as worried relatives, they laugh and say that they are still children. But that is exactly the moment when someone learns right from wrong and right FROM wrong. My cousin, however, shows no physical signs of violence (but has extreme symptoms of becoming a brat). Well, not yet. Without adult limitations or monitored access to games, my little cousin is destined for the worst of life as he is just beginning, and soon that brilliant mind of his will no longer be as brilliant. You may wonder how I know this, but I know this because of his academic performance. Conference after conference, his teachers express to his parents their concern for little Isaiah and how he is in the classroom. In front of the television, watching a Disney show or playing its manygames, Isaiah is a big, bright-eyed spectator, reciting lines along with the actors and adding his own sound FX to the games he's playing. In class, however, he is one of the very few who struggles more. When he assigns homework to Isaiah, he certainly takes it home, but he fails to complete it. When forced to complete it, the little boy will not pay attention. He is agitated and easily distracted. His reading skills are those of a five-year-old, and his mental-mindedness to everything else except television and games is zero. These effects are becoming more serious because they occur more often. As for the mental harm they have on children, these social media and entertainment also have a socially damaging effect on children exposed to them. Pat Schroeder, the former Colorado congresswoman who now heads the Association of American Publishers, argued, as Miller quotes, that media, advertising, entertainment, the Internet, etc. they “isolate individuals” in their technological world. “This is the beautiful American family living the American dream… But we need ways to relate to each other as human beings. We must work to establish a connection.”(422). Miller readily agrees with Schroeder's opinion on the matter, in which he continues to admit his desires for a future in which people are still capable of having physical encounter, connection, and communion with others. Schroeder and Miller both point out that this desire for a future in which people actually meet is threatened by the multiple forms of cyberspace that exist today. With computer screens and media occupying the time of younger generations, the dream of a better future of meeting other human beings is slowly fading away. The social life of this future generation does not seem so good judging by their behavior today. Now that I've made Miller and Schroeder's point, why should you care after these points I've made? Why do I care? Well, with the absence of social encounters with other people, the social skills one actually has will be very limited and they are unlikely to get any job without the experience of talking to another person. Asking for directions to a place you've never been will take some courage and humility to admit that you're lost and need help. Now, for someone who feels comfortable within the narrow walls of their home, with the bright screen in front of them, it will be very difficult to find a single word to orient themselves. These social meeting skills are very important for the younger generation to practice and overcome for the sake of their future and wherever life takes them and to be successful in a future career. Where these kids end up in life affects us too, because when we get older and retire, these very kids, these drug addicts and cyber addicts will rule the nation and take care of our retired butts. Now would you trust your life in a guy you've never met in a bar with friends? Or a guy whose vision of a better tomorrow is to fill every inch of America with loaded guns, weak cops, freedom to commit crimes, and extra lives? That every day is another day in a video game? I highly doubt it. Solving a problem one way means taking steps towards making the problem better, to make it no longer a problem. Now, with slightly more complicated problems like the one we have at hand, it's not so simple. How do parents and/or guardians control their children's access to these media? It's very difficult, especially now that kids have their own devicecell phone as early as twelve years old, and parents are becoming more and more incompetent and it is not possible to track what children are inclined to do with electronic devices and the Internet. Sure, we can take away their phones, cut off their home Internet access, and throw away their games and televisions. But is it really necessary? Will it help? I would say that they can access the Internet in any public place, like a library, and they can play those same games that you threw away, at a friend's house, and they can buy their own cell phone anywhere because cell phones are not hard to find, nor too expensive for a teenager to purchase with no more than $50.00. Now you might be thinking, well, I'm screwed! Well, almost. There are companies and manufacturers that supply them and make them things that you don't like and you don't want your child to access them without your permission and unfortunately they supply, all year round, constantly with a higher demand and a greater flow in and out exit. These manufacturers provide the very violence, the very materials that keep your children hooked on their product and what can you do? Should these companies face court and be fined? Their concern is money, but your concern is your child's health; and your child's health does not improve now that he is exposed to such violence and such products that are booming in business and which pose a threat to your children's future. Remember, to rule the world, you will need skill. Skills that video games cannot provide or finance. What to do about it? However, among all these very, very negative effects that media and social entertainment have on this younger generation, there is a slight exception of media playing in our lives. Social media and entertainment, I must admit, are not all bad. Because with the evolution of technology, life is becoming easier to live, with the help of these advancements. Thanks to social media and entertainment, it can make work as well as school easier, and we can communicate abroad, with those we simply cannot see in person within minutes, people who are on the other side of the country or of the world. We also connect on social media with our loved ones around the world and we need it. My parents, for example, are on the other side of the world. They are located on an island in the South Pacific Ocean, specifically in the Kingdom of Tonga, and I owe it to social entertainment and media to be able to connect with them whenever I want. Media has its ups and downs, and I have to give in to this argument, because I use social media for personal use. Most importantly, monitoring our children's access to media is not all we need to do. This still doesn't work for us, there are still shootings going on, like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Boston Marathon shooting, what's to stop them? After the Columbine shooting, gun control went up a notch, but last year these events still occurred, lives were still lost due to violent behavior and violent media, for now it is still an issue violence IS entertainment, violence IS what runs through the media, broadcasting wars, shootings and tragedies across the nation. Social media helps on a daily basis, but it is destructive. The social skills that children lose, due to cyberspace and mental gaps that are instead filled with nonsense on televisions, will not be made any better than a lawsuit or some broken game controllers. What should we do, because it seems like there is nothing to be done, because no matter what we do, everything ends violently and unsuccessfully? What needs to change in the world we find ourselves in.