Our New World

It is a sickening video.  A Georgia teen carefully places a helpless baby on an inflatable pillow.  He jumps on the pillow, catapulting the child through the air like a missile.  The child lands on the floor.  The boy, apparently proud of his feat, videotapes the act and places it on YouTube.

This is the new world in which we live. There are two, if not many more, disturbing trends happening in America: 1) The need for celebrity by any means necessary, and 2) the anesthetizing of emotions in young people. 

Reality TV (such as programs like the now defunct "JackAss") and YouTube have given the average person who is desperate for attention a forum to showcase their talents, or lack thereof.  In many cases, they succeed in demonstrating to the world their severe lack of judgment and good taste.

In June, six teens were arrested in New York for robbing a man at a supermarket.  The teens were armed with crowbars and bats.  Their motivation?  They were emulating the graphically violent, yet disturbingly popular video game, Grand Theft Auto.

These teens are a reflection of our society.   Our collective need for profit, fame, significance and a laissez faire attitude towards parenting puts us at risk for more increasingly dangerous behavior.  I believe in the garbage-in-garbage-out school of thought.  If we do not monitor what our children receive from television, music and the internet and discuss the ramifications of their actions, we will all be impacted by their poor decisions, directly or indirectly.

The child in the video survived.  The next one may not.