Should Sex and Violence Be Restricted?

When you turn on the TV after coming home from school or work, what would you expect to see? A talk-show with an African-American woman talking about life stories, a show about babies running around in diapers that can talk (Rugrats) or one showing people killing each other? Most people would choose the first or the second, and that is the way TV is. During the afternoon when young children or teens are sitting around the TV, those are the shows that are aired, but it doesn’t mean that the other types of shows showing violent or sexual acts can’t be aired at all. Why can’t both types of shows be on TV? If we have the freedom of speech, shouldn’t we also have the freedom to watch what we want on TV? What you watch on TV is your choice and affects yourself. If it makes you act in a negative way, you are the one controlling those actions, not the networks that put shows like CSI, COPS, or Sex and the City on TV.

Television has been around ever since the late 1800’s in some sort of form. The human race has been around much longer than this and violence has been a part of human society ever since then. We have known many different kinds of violence from punching a kid on the playground to flying a plane into a building and killing thousands. It would be very hard to limit the violence that exists in our lives because we see it everywhere we go, showing that TV isn’t the only outlet for violence.

Sex is a topic that every kid faces in his or her life at some point. Whether it is discussed in school, at home, or with friends, kids experience it. In today’s world, it is very hard to go without seeing these images of violence or talking about sex because it is everywhere. And that can actually be a good thing. The knowledge kids learn about topics like sex can come from TV and can help them in life. There are such shows that involve discussing sex in order to teach about safe sex, the results from unsafe sex, and just basic knowledge on how to make good choices for you and your body. If people want to rid sex from TV, then these types of shows would need to be removed as well. In doing this, there is a risk for kids who grow up now knowing about sex. These kids grow up and eventually have to face the “real” world where they won’t have someone to guide them. They will need to make decisions that will affect them forever, and learning to make the right decisions when they’re young will help them throughout life.

If there is such a problem with seeing sex and violence on TV, then what about seeing it in magazines, books, ads, music, movies, or the internet? Today, there are so many ways for the media to advertise. There are many ways to catch people’s attention and by appealing to their senses, they are able to capture the attention of a specific audience. Violence is very appealing to teens and by using violence in ads or commercials, audiences are influenced by it. Whether these ads or commercials are on TV or on the Internet, viewers see violence. So for those who have a problem with these subjects on TV, this scenario makes it clear that it occurs everywhere else as well, and trying to rid all of these is simply impossible.

Imagine this: You sit down to watch some TV. You flip through the channels and see what’s good. You notice there are no shows with any fighting, shooting, or sexual suggestions. What would you do? Stay and watch or turn off the TV and go do something else? If you did the second, then you would one of the many causing networks that are putting these shows on TV to lower their viewer ratings. The truth is, sex and violence sell. While the percents for people who believe that there is too much sex and violence on TV are up in the 60%-70% range, these people first have to watch sex and violence on TV in order to make these opinions. If you don’t believe the statement that sex and violence sell, then imagine a show that you see regularly. I’m sure everyone knows of at least one show that demonstrates violence in some form and makes references to sex, such as crude