It's finally October which means its time for Halloween!!! I personally really like this holiday; so to enjoy myself this past weekend I visited a haunted house with some friends back home. In all of the advertisements I had seen for this haunted house, they all said it was not recommended for children under the age of 13. To my surprise though, there was a ton of little kids there. I could not believe what I was seeing; I even saw some infants there. Just to make it clear, the age group for the kids that I saw ranged from infants and toddlers to 13 and up.
Now this haunted house was not that scary(at least for me, a 21 year old). It was more of a jump scare factor which was interesting. Also it alot of gruesome,blood and gore, images. But the whole time I was there I was thinking of why was there so many children there? What is our society coming to that parents think its ok to let their children see that kind of stuff. I know my parents would have never let me see those kinds of things at that age. But that's the thing, I grew up in a different age.
As I said in a previous blog, the technology we have today is more advanced than the technology that was available a few years age. I believe this is causing kids to become desensitized to a multitude of things including scary things. Technology allows instant access to virtually anything because of the internet. According to a study that I found, 25% of kids are using the internet daily by the age of three.
http://www.edudemic.com/technology-for-children/
To me this is an alarming statistic! I personally do not think kids should be able to do this. It can cause them to experience things that are meant for adult vision only. And because many kids now have iphone's or smartphones, they can look up any thing any time. Just the other day I heard of a news story about these two 12 year girls who attempted to kill their "best friend" as a sacrifice to Slender man. (For those who do not know, Slender man is a factitious horror character).
I want to come back to the scene that stood out to me the most the other night at the haunted house. Along the pathways were scary scenes for decoration. In one area there was a scene of these two people being impaled, with the pole coming out of their mouth. It was a very gruesome sight and if I was a little kid I would have believed it was real. But at this decoration area, what I see is a mom and her two sons getting their picture taken with the impaled bodies, as if it was like a normal family picture. And by my judgement, one son might have been 9 years old and the other maybe 4 years old.
I believe many things could be to blame for this but what I believe is it is a mixture of everything. Media defiantly has a role to be played in this seen. Technology also has something to do with it. But I just can not wrap my mind on how we can go from a happy family picture in a pumpkin patch, to a happy family picture with impaled bodies in the background.
Maybe its our society as whole shifting its thoughts. Going from modern thought to post-modern thought??
I will continue to contemplate this because it really shook me seeing all the parents allowing little kids see adult things.
I agree! The culture in the United States has become more and more violent. It is appalling that we allow shooting, stabbing, blood, and gore to be shown on television, but for some reason showing an uncovered female nipple is unacceptable. It's really backwards. I think the anecdote about the mother posing with her young children in front of the impaled bodies is a great example.
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