Some people believe that increasing violence in the media is the cause of increasing violence in our society, especially among children. Others believe that children's peer groups and parental role models are a much more influence on children's behavior

The statement above asks for opinion of what influence more on children while they grow - violence in the media or peers and parental influence. To my mind, one has to take a holistic approach and consider all the forces that affect children while they grow and form as individuals. However, parent, no doubt, have all the levers to help their babies to become responsible and conscious individuals. I would like to delve more into details for each of the affecting forces - media, peers and parents.

First, mass media has a huge influence on young kids only if parents allow kids to be influenced by it. For example, many parents leave their youngsters to watch TV for whole day long to occupy kids and make sure kids do not distract them. However, this is quite detrimental approach as advertisements, commercials and aggressive messages penetrate into children's heads totally unchecked. In case parents are close by while children watch TV, they could give an explanation of what’s going on the screen and prevent subliminal messages from going too deeps into children’s heads. Moreover, children’s might become a victim of violent scenes and other unusual information not only from TV but also from journals and internet.

Secondly, children are influenced profusely by surrounding children of the same age in schools and playgroup settings. In case one kid watches something violent on TV he could share this information with the whole group at school, disseminating information about occurring event. Let's say Michael watched a murder of young women, who was also raped, in great painstaking details. The kid is overwhelmed by the scene and needs to splash out his emotions to someone and, as a result, the whole group of kids knows about horrible scene and horrified and confused.

Thirdly, in my mind the most influential and affecting force to children's outlook and behavior is their parents. However, the influence depends on how much time parents are ready to invest in children's upbringing. As, in case parents are working all over the clock and have no time for their kids, parents’ influence will be minimized. But in general, children copy their parent's behavior patterns and parent’s outlook on life. If parents are respectful to their children and their needs, children usually listen to parents and respect them in response. Therefore, parents have ability to correct any of children's violent thinking and actions and save them from dangerous influence of society and mass media.

As a result, potentially parents have much bigger impact on their children as anybody or anything else. Parent can precipitate with their love any violent inclinations of their kids. However, we should not deny the dangerous influence of mass media that could occur if parents are not vigilant. But in order to understand the entire picture, the wholesome approach is needed to see the seriousness of situation and to comprehend how much influence and pervasiveness mass media actually does on youngsters.