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Parenting Strategy 12:

Teach Your Child to be Media Savvy

BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT

What is the effect of all the videos, TV, radio, billboards, magazines, and movies your child sees and plays with? Plenty — as any parent who's been shocked to discover at the end of The Parenting Game that many of the values she thought she'd instilled in her children are missing.

Before that happens to you, remember that you not only have the right to monitor the time your child watches TV and what programs he watches in your home (though that admittedly gets more difficult the older the child becomes). You have the responsibility to instill your values if they are different than those portrayed in the media.

Is it your value that your children should smoke? Then consider this:

Teens who see a lot of ads for beer, wine, liquor, and cigarettes admit that it influences them to want to drink and smoke. It is not by chance that the three most advertised cigarette brands are also the most popular ones smoked by teens.

Is it your value that your children should be overweight or bulimic? Then consider this:

Media heavily promote unhealthy foods while at the same time telling people they need to lose weight and be thin. It's not surprising when studies show that girls of all ages worry about their weight and many of them are starting to diet at early ages. A recent article about Desperate Housewives noted that all the actresses are thin and one wears a size 00!

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics article on Understanding the Impact of Media on Children and Teens, often "the thin and perfect-looking person on screen or in print is not even one whole person but parts of several people! This 'person' is created by using body doubles, airbrushing, and computer-graphics techniques."

Is it your value that your children should become enthusiastic consumers of every product that comes down the pike? Then consider this:

Susan Linn, associate director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center and an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has written extensively about the effects of media and commercial marketing on children. In her book, Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, she says that, "Comparing the marketing kids experience today to what they experienced years ago is like comparing a BB gun to a Smart Bomb."

Linn writes that, "It's harder and harder to find 'unbranded' time for children, time that is not in their face selling them something. It's hard to find 'unbranded' baby paraphernalia, so all of those characters — Elmo or Dora the Explorer or Disney characters — are sold as wallpaper in babies' rooms. They're all selling something."

There is even peer-to-peer selling called 'buzz-marketing' or 'viral marketing." This is when kids are hired to market to other kids without telling their friends that that is what they're doing.

Do you want your child to become a bully? Let your preschooler watch lots of television — the risk increases by each hour. Do you want your child to swear? Listen to the language on almost any show.

I could go on and on in this vein, but I hope I've made my point. You aren't going to eliminate media's attempt to influence your child. You can, however, make considerable headway by teaching your child to be media savvy. See the sidebar for suggestions.

© Copyright 2005, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

HELP YOUR CHILD BECOME A CRITICAL MEDIA CONSUMER

Here are a few things you can do to raise a child with a critical appreciation of media.

Discuss what is good about various media, what is bad, and whether it makes a difference.

Put programs on VHS or DVD so you can watch them together and stop the action while you discuss what you're seeing in both the program and in the innumerable ads that interrupt them (and are also becoming part of the plot).

As you watch ads, point out the effect of techniques such as color and the suggestion of that one can achieve power by simply buying a product, without having to achieve respect from one's own actions.

Encourage your child to develop his own media material. For example, show him how to design plays with his friends in which they have "ads" specifically designed to get people to buy something or to do something silly. As they work to come up with something that is convincing, they can become more aware of the techniques of advertising.

If you don't want your child to watch something, don't let her. You are the parent. You don't need to apologize for your values. It may be not easy, but it will demonstrate that you care enough to set standards.

Discuss how simplistic stereotypes and gratuitous violence in video games often denigrates women and desensitizes us to the effect of violence in the real world.

Finally, in speaking of the real world, be sure to point out that despite movie and TV characters who jump into bed with one partner and then another, pregnancy and venereal disease often are often the consequence of having unprotected sex.

ONLINE SUPPORT FOR PARENTS

Commercial Alert

Commercial Alert's mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.

Media Education Foundation

The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.

Children's Media Project

CMP is an arts and education organization focusing on media and technology. Their mission is to create a teaching/learning environment where artists, educators, community activists and especially children and youth can learn to interact with the media arts both as creators and critical viewers.

© Copyright 2005, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT