"Then shall we simply allow our children to listen to any stories that anyone happens to make up, and so receive into their minds ideas often the very opposite of those we shall think they ought to have when they grow up?" This statement was not made by some 1990's conservative religious leader about television and movies. It was a question posed by Socrates to his student Plato in Plato's Republic. It concerns me deeply what the media consider appropriate material for children and even more so what parents allow their children to watch. In her book Viewing Violence, Madeline Levine, a child psychologist, decrees "the debate is over. Violence on television and in the movies is damaging to children. Forty years of research conclude that repeated exposure to high levels of media violence teaches some children and adolescents to settle interpersonal differences with violence, while teaching many more to be indifferent to this solution" (p. 3).
The average child watches four hours of television a day and I am tired of media moguls and others with agendas that always lead to their bank accounts trying to suggest that what we watch on TV and in the movies has no significant effect on us. If they were right, advertisers would not spend thousands of dollars to get their products spotlighted in movie clips and millions of dollars for commercials.
It would be too simplistic to reduce the cause-effect relationship between the media and any given behavior to a one-to-one relationship or to assert that media exposure has the same effect on everyone. People are much too complicated for such assertions to be made. Likewise, no specific program, movie, producer, or actress/actor is responsible for all the ills associated with the media. However, the cumulative effect of the daily doses of violence, promiscuity, immorality, thoughtlessness, prejudice, and stereotyping create callous, desensitized individuals. As Levine states, there is nothing to argue about. The effects are clear.
Levine states that the media, especially commercial television, have as their primary agenda to round up the largest and most affluent audience they can and deliver that audience to an advertiser. They are not concerned with the welfare of our families nor are they concerned about the welfare of our children. The careless use of the media by families is psychological suicide. Children who are heavy viewers of television score more poorly on nearly every cognitive task than those who are light viewers of television. To carelessly invite popular media ideas, values, and attitudes into our homes is to ignore the responsibility we have as parents to socialize our children in that which is good, healthy, noble, and in the best interest of our culture.
The effects of media influence on our children, whether it is violence, sexual behavior, honesty, or other standards of conduct, are not trivial. Senseless killing, maiming, profanity, and gratuitous sexual behavior produces desensitized children who are apt to copy the behaviors being modeled for them.
It is easy to ignore the research and use TV and movies as cheap and effective babysitters which occupy children's minds and to avoid interacting with them one-on-one. I argue that parents should carefully use television, movies, and other media as useful, but potentially dangerous tools. TV is not all bad. Programs like Barney, Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street are outstanding children's programs. PBS educational programming is often quite good for adolescents and adults. I will assert, however, that the vast majority of what is broadcast is worthless for the development of our children. The networks, because of their dependence on advertising dollars, often produce an endless drivel of mind-numbing sitcoms and dramas, relying on cheap, but effective, sleaze and violence, which in no way pursues the betterment of our minds, our culture, and our nation.
You may consider my comments too harsh. However, somebody has to tell the public what those of us in the educational and mental health field have known for years, and it certainly will not be advertisers, television and movie executives, or industry spokespersons. Can we please pull our heads out of the sand and realize that what we are doing is allowing our children to "receive into their minds ideas often the very opposite of those we shall think they ought to have when they grow up"?
