Guns, fighting, insults, bombs, more fighting: these are the ingredients to many forms of children’s entertainment. Efforts on the media’s part to hide violence from kids are either extremely weak or nonexistent. Mistakes, exceptions, and leniency allow mature or inappropriate behavior to seep into productions kids see on a daily basis. There is simply too much violence, particularly in movies, that young kids are exposed to, either directly or indirectly.

Movies are one of the largest sources of violence in the twenty-first century, whether it be a few previews before a movie starts that go too far, lenient ratings for the actual movie, or the occasional “slip-up” that leaks violent and inappropriate material to little kids.

According to the Daily Mercury news website, despite what seems like hard work to ensure kids aren’t seeing age-inappropriate material, accidents happen. In London, the trailers for The Devil Inside and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance were shown before the movie Puss In Boots (dailymercury.com.au). Obviously, these horror films weren’t meant for the family-friendly audience, but they still got in there. No matter how hard the media says it tries, violence still seeps into television and movies where it doesn’t belong, inadvertently teaching kids profanity and brutality.

“Movies show people getting tagged and killed just to attract viewers,” said Senior Saoul Olivas. While movies are given either G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17 ratings, much of the time they aren’t appropriate indicators of material found in the film. According to a study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, “the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA’s) rating system increasingly has assigned violent content to the PG-13 rating category, [with] some content that previously would have received a restrictive R-rating is now assigned a PG-13 rating”(annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org). In addition, according to the Huffington Post, the MPAA rules that if a mere two-thirds of the board decides that the movie is acceptable, the PG-13 rating is a go. Ineffective policies like this are what allow movies like War of the Worlds (2000) and Beowulf (2007) to escape with a PG-13 rating, despite their violent themes (huffingtonpost.com).

    Even more striking are the intended instances of violence or profanity in movies specifically made for the 5-12 age group. According to the Harvard School of Public Health’s website, a growing number of films, including recent ones like The Lorax or Despicable Me, are packed with jokes completely based on violence or bad manners. Admittedly, while not exactly a great form of humor, a couple kicks or punches isn’t much of a problem. However, when close to every joke from a G-rated movie is based on either a hit or burp, the negative impacts should be considered. Kids pick up attitudes from a variety of places, but if they continually see violence as they are now, it has a good chance of impacting them in a negative way (hsph.harvard.edu).

Previews, movies, and similar forms of visual media are just a few of the ways children are continually exposed to rude or violent behavior. Whether explicit content is targeting children or not, the media needs to evaluate how much of it they are allowing young kids to be exposed to. In many cases, they should learn to scale it back a great deal.