| Hi Ed, Yes, I believe that as our society has become more morally and spiritually lax it has had the effect of teaching our children that there are no true morals or spiritual values and that everythng is relative. Over the course of a child's first 18 years they have watched approximately 10,000 murders being committed on television, along with a host of other crimes and misdemeanors I won't go into right now. Most of those crimes of violence were committed during times of extreme anger. Therefore, the message to the child can be, "If I get angry enough I am justified in killing. Besides, I'm a minor and the authorities will go easier on me than if I were an adult." I know some of the older kids believe this because they have told me so in therapy. But there are many possible reasons why kids kill other people. For example, there are people who have an Anti-social Personality Disorder. They have no conscience and no sense of moral right or wrong. The know the difference they just don't care. Although, these people are not always violent, most of the inmates that I have worked with have had at least traits of this disorder since early childhood. It is also my belief that this wave of childhood violence we are now seeing stems back to the breakdown of the family. While "Leave It To Beaver" was a fantasy on TV for many of my generation, it bore little or no resemblence to our personal life experiences. As a result, some parents of that and the subsequent generations, began abdictating their parental duty and turning it over to the school system and the child welfare system. Children can be very manipulative and, in time, many children have learned to use the legal system to avoid appropriate parenting. Many homes are now single parent homes where the parent doesn't have the time nor money to provide adequate supervision for the children involved. The majority of these homes are headed by women who often work for less money due to lack of education, skills or recent experience. Therefore, the child is left on their own and are known as "latch-key kids." In most of these cases the father is out of the home. His whereabouts may be unknown or, if known, he is probably non-supportive of his children and ex-wife. Even if his whereabouts are known and he is cooperative with visitation rights, these are usually fraught with problems resulting from the divorced couple making mature decisions about the nature of their relationship where it concerned their children. I know I have only touched on some of the reasons why your observation is correct. The further our planet advances technologically the more it seems to aid in moral and spiritual decline. Do you suppose one of the reasons that might be true is because Technology has become the new god of this age? | 
