Parents Lose Choices

[nbcrusader]

Group: Children's TV isn't kid stuff

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Children's television programs are filled with violent, disrespectful, aggressive behaviors, according to a study commissioned by a conservative television watchdog group.

The Parents Television Council says they monitored more than 440 hours of programming geared toward young people and found more than 3,488 incidents of violence, an average of almost eight incidents per hour.

If it is a parent's responsibility alone to control a child's media intake, how much choice is left for a parent who wants to avoid violence, etc.?

 

[verte76]

None, it seems.

 

[Irvine511]

you question the wisdom of the free market?

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I don't know how parents do it these days- with the content of some of the internet, TV, movies, etc. It must be extremely difficult. They do the best they can I guess and many do a great job. I still believe that the actions and words of parents speak louder than any TV show can.

 

[yolland]

Well one way we have around it is, we don't even own a television--though admittedly, we made that decision well before we had kids, and on the rather different basis that we simply don't enjoy enough of the programming to justify the expense. We do rent a *lot* of DVDs, which we watch on our PC. And I've been known to choose running on the treadmill at the faculty gym even when it's gorgeous out, so I can watch Food Network while I run .

Seriously, though...

I still believe that the actions and words of parents speak louder than any TV show can.

Perhaps my lack of exposure has made me naive, but honestly, I'm more worried about the kinds of violence, disrespect, and aggression my kids are going to see played out all day long at school than what they're watching at their friends' houses. I grew up in a community where relatively few folks had a television (though we did), yet school was often still a brutal place--I think the kind of abstract, archetypal violence and menace you see played out on television is far less (de)formative and warping than living immersed in the real thing. It may be less gory, but you can't change the channel on a bully or fantasize your way out of hearing your own friends say shockingly ugly and bigoted things or take a snack break while someone's world-wise older brother regales you with his sexual-and-sexist exploits with sadistic glee. That kind of thing embodies parental failure to cultivate compassion and respect on all kinds of levels besides monitoring media intake.

I can certainly understand the alarm parents feel at what their children will watch on TV without batting an eyelash. What I don't get at all is the seeming lack of equal concern from too many parents about the kinds of behavior their kids are learning, far too young, to shrug off and just accept as the price of socialization from their peers in and out of school.

 

[melon]

Group: Children's TV isn't kid stuff

If it is a parent's responsibility alone to control a child's media intake, how much choice is left for a parent who wants to avoid violence, etc.?

The group who has made these claims has a vested interest in claiming that we live in a big, bad, violent, indecent world. Compared to the kind of cartoons I grew up watching, the stuff today is downright tame.

And because of that, I have my doubts to the credibility of such a trite argument.

Melon

 

[VertigoGal]

Frankly after watching a few episodes of Spongebob the other day, I'm more concerned about the underlying, deep-seated cynicism some of these "kids shows" are planting in the minds of the innocent babes. Seriously, some of that stuff is pretty jaded.

But anyway...it does seem like the violence on tv is so pervasive that the old "it's the parents' responsibility" thing doesn't hold up. I guess you could choose not to own a tv....but who wants to do that?

 

[Carek1230]

If it's not TV then it's video games, music lyrics, MTV, news on TV or in newspapers, the school yard or peer pressure that is right there waiting in the wings to corrupt young minds. Completely gone is the time of a child innocent.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I liked Ren and Stimpy

 

[nbcrusader]

Re: Re: Parents Lose Choices

The group who has made these claims has a vested interest in claiming that we live in a big, bad, violent, indecent world. Compared to the kind of cartoons I grew up watching, the stuff today is downright tame.

And because of that, I have my doubts to the credibility of such a trite argument.

Melon

I'm not sure the statement that cartoons of 20 years ago were necessarily worse. Perhaps maturity has changed how you view cartoons today.

 

[Irvine511]

Re: Re: Re: Parents Lose Choices

I'm not sure the statement that cartoons of 20 years ago were necessarily worse. Perhaps maturity has changed how you view cartoons today.

it's my understanding that children's television has been much more sanitized over the past 20 years.

the stuff i loved was very violent -- He-Man, Transformers, Voltron, etc.

all fighting shows. and all totally divorced from anything remotely resembling reality.

 

[Shaliz]

Even some of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons are pretty violent, if you think about it.