Parents Need to Control What Their Children Watch

A lot of people these days criticize companies of violent internet pages, movies, or video games for revealing all of the violence to kids. Are the companies really to blame though? I think that the parents of children should be way more to blame than companies. I read an article called What's Up Doc? A Bloody Outrage, That's What written by Katherine Ellison. The article appeared in The Washington Post in 2005. This article upset me on many different levels.

To begin with, she starts her internet article off with walking in on her young son watching a graphic internet cartoon. She then got angry that her son found such a video and immediately criticized the cartoon. Great opening, why don't you just announce to the world you are a bad parent instead? How can you be mad at a company, whose primary goal is not to lure in unsuspecting children, but to make money? Most likely, due to it's extremely graphic content, the primary target of the show (Happy Tree Friends) would most likely be late teenagers to early adults. This audience seems much more suitable for the show. Granted, I'm not a parent and I would most likely be frustrated with the cartoon as well, but I would take the blame for not making sure I was supervising my child right. About halfway through the article, the author talked about big companies with their ads on the show. Just because the internet cartoon has a lot of violence and is based towards a more mature audience does not mean that a company should put their ads on the show. The whole article, up until the end, doesn't even really have a point, other than showing how shows have changed from Tom & Jerry to the shows of today. Her point of the ads from bigger companies being on these TV shows doesn't show how the shows are bad today.

Finally, after rambling on her point of ads, she ads in that parents do ultimately have the responsibility to censor their children. You don't say? However, she goes on to say it might be a disservice to her child if she kept "spending so much time and energy chasing them off the Internet, while coaching them in empathy, manners and the Golden Rule." Well if you contradict your main point of the article, why did you even write it? In the following paragraph, she needs to clarify her main points because she did such a poor job of it to begin with.

Regardless of how terrible her article may have been, companies don't have to keep their ads off of violent cartoons or internet shows. Some companies could probably benefit from running their ads to a more mature audience. Regarding censorship of her children, it isn't the child's fault for getting into mischief and watching violent cartoons. People need to watch their children and instruct them not to do those things and set parameters. If it becomes a problem, disconnect the internet or block certain websites! Again, I am not a parent, so I obviously cannot speak from experience, and I do accept that parenting is a lot easier said than done. I am simply saying, you cannot blame a show for anything other than the fact that you could't prevent a child from obtaining access to it in your own home. If you can't control your kids while they are children, have fun when they are teenagers.