Look at the alternatives to old-fashioned values
JESSICA FLIPPEN

Drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll. Is that a true portrayal of adolescents?

Well, TV sure doesn’t help this image. In fact, this stereotype is true of some of us. TV influences our behavior quite a bit. One night, while scanning the TV screen for shows, inappropriate previews pour-ed in from the tube: Everyone Loves Raymond featured old men ogling over Raymond’s wife, who was teaching their club computer skills; Two and a Half Men had a skimpily dressed 16-year-old flirting with the older bachelors.

One of the CSI shows featured prostitutes. And who can forget that infamous moment when Britney Spears publicly French - kissed Madonna on television?

It is hard to find a video from the library or video store that doesn’t have violent or sexual content. Portable DVD players make it possible to show films like American Pie to curious circles of guys craning to get a look.
Internet, even with filters, should be supervised by an adult. Inappropriate advertisements pop up when enough bad searches are made and expose even the innocent to immoral material.

Popular department stores have shirts in the Junior department with logos containing sexual connotations. Full-blown underwear and lingerie ads are featured in newspapers. The models for underwear in catalogs are sexy. Some child flipping through trying to find the toy section might run across the pictures and be confused.

Drugs are another hot topic. Forensics specials such as the Ecstasy episode expose how drugs are produced and give teens ideas. People at school joke about ‘happy brownies.’ It makes me distrust any baked good that doesn’t come from my lunch bag.

The school bathrooms sometimes contain the smell of joints. Too many kids don’t see the harm in experimenting with drugs and throw their lives away.
I heard a story about a guy who tripped on LSD at a concert and, seeing a blur of color, imagined he saw the lights of an ambulance. He thought he was dead and his friends had left him lying on the floor. What a hellish experience he must have had.

It is also hard to find music lyrics that aren’t inappropriate, dark or blasphemous. I wanted to receive a Flogging Molly CD for Christmas. My mom looked up the words to their songs on the Internet and was appalled. On the CD the singers mocked God, asked why He didn’t come down from His cross to help those suffering throughout the world.

I got an Evanescence CD instead and found many of her songs to be poetic, but disturbing. She had dark song titles on her latest CD like Going Under, My Last Breath, and Haunted. The lyrics were filled with emptiness and agony. Evanescence considers sleep, daydreams and death the best way to escape.

I guess Simon and Garfunkel will do just fine. Or Avril Lavigne.
I may have old-fashioned values, but look at the alternative.