America may be the only society on earth to have experienced what has been called an 'epidemic of children killing children,' which is ravaging some of its communities today.

Regardless of how often the appetite for entertainment violence becomes addictive, increased exposure does risk further desensitizing viewers. And the element of pleasure that they derive may lead them to regard violence as a more acceptable way of dealing with problems, and victimization as more tolerable so long as it befalls others, not themselves.

Deceit and violence - these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings.

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.

The television screen is the lens through which most children learn about violence. Through the magnifying power of this lens, their everyday life becomes suffused by images of shootings, family violence, gang warfare, kidnappings, and everything else that contributes to violence in our society. It shapes their experiences long before they have had the opportunity to consent to such shaping or developed the ability to cope adequately with this knowledge.

Empathy and fellow feeling form the very basis of morality. The capacities for empathy, for feeling responsibility toward others and for reaching out to help them can be stunted or undermined early on, depending on a child's experiences in the home and neighborhood. It becomes too easy to turn our backs on fellow human beings... to have 'compassion fatigue.' Technology, we are learning, is not neutral.

We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.