Recently, an increasing number of North American youth are committing violent crimes. While the consequences of these violent crimes are easily apparent, the causes behind them are often abstract and obscure, making it difficult to place blame on a single source. Furthermore, this deviant behavior among youth can be attributed to a combination of several generalized factors. Major factors contributing to youth violence include the media, the influence of family life, widespread drug and alcohol abuse, ease of access to weapons, and the lack of harsh sanctions for juvenile offenders. If we want to stem this increase in aggressive acts, we need to determine and analyze the causes of youth violence to determine which, if any, can be affected by change. First, the most obvious and publicized cause explaining youth violence is the inevitable and highly influential exposure of young people to violence in the media, particularly television violence. Young people, particularly children, are susceptible to learning violent ideals through their high level of exposure to North American television programming. Parents have come to rely on the use of television as a babysitting service and thus have increased television's influence on the fragile and easily manipulated minds of their children. On average, a typical Canadian child will watch approximately 22 hours of television per week (Childley 38). Over the course of their adolescent lives, this equates to more time spent watching television than in school, playing sports, or communicating with parents and friends (Childey 39). It is not the amount of television watched that has created this problem, but rather that it is the content of North American television that has spiraled out of control and has distorted the minds of countless children. The correlation between aggressive behavior and television viewing is explained by the violent content of modern television programs. Estimates have indicated that by the time a child reaches the age of twelve, they will have witnessed up to 12,000 violent deaths on television, and that this can lead to “a short-term intensification of aggression” (Childley 38). . We live in an era where Hollywood is applauded for its creativity and originality when it comes to new ways to kill off characters. As a result, it is no wonder that youth violence has increased by 140% in Canada too bad……half of paper……nt sentencing juvenile offenders who have committed acts of violence may succeed in rehabilitating them if they spend little or no time spent in a correctional institution. It can be stated conclusively that youth violence in North America is a multi-faceted issue and its causes can be approached from several perspectives. The media, particularly in the form of television, plays a huge role in presenting the world to young people, even if what is presented is a violent world. At home, violence can be learned objectively or subjectively by observing a parent's aggressive behavior or experiencing it firsthand. Furthermore, young North Americans place themselves at a high predisposition to violence through the sale and use of drugs. From a legal perspective, North American governments appear to have done little in terms of creating obstacles to prevent young people from committing violent crimes. All of these factors are not necessarily ubiquitous, but the influence of one or a combination of them is enough to incite violent behavior in youth everywhere. The scale and severity of these problems has already stigmatized an entire generation of young people, not to mention.