A violent world surrounds us. Although violence had been prevalent in our society from the beginning but now, unfortunately, it has assumed the kind of intensity it never had and it has also taken root in the immature minds to become something of a creed. There are many reasons for increasing violence among youth including poverty and other psychiatric disorders but it is not a secret any more that media is also playing a fairly central role in promoting the extent and incidence of violence. Childhood exposure to media violence produces aggressive behaviour in young adults. Television being ubiquitous in our homes, children are exposed to this menace on a daily basis, some even having television sets in bedrooms. The box distracts them from healthy physical activities and compels them to keep indulging in pleasures of varied television content, often without supervision of parents. The outcome of this extreme exposure to violent programs is that children develop fear of the world around them and respond to it with undue aggression. Media violence can do great damage to psyche of young children as in their crucial formative years, they are unable to differentiate between facts and fantasies and learn by simply observing and imitating. Exposed to violent role models in early life, they end up imitating them in real life, in boyhood as well as later when they are adults themselves. Violence on screen creates a sort of immunization and with passage of time, children lose their ability to sympathize with the victim. They start taking it to be an ordinary occurrence. A disturbing new addition to the violent content is the current rage of video-gaming. No less than 80% of all top-selling video games have nothing but blood and gore, kill, kill and kill again. The obvious result is what we see as the trend of the times in our society; it is taken to be 'cool' to have a weapon in hand and bullying others is considered heroism. We are all role playing the bad movies we saw and the violent videogames we played--in real life. -SHAZMEEN MAROOF, Lahore, September 3.