outside the (toy) box

“American children and adolescents spend 22 - 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping.  By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV.”

One box that feels particularly stifling to me is the television and all its little and big screened cousins.  For myself, I love TV (often telling dh, “no, please don’t take away the dancing lights” when he says it’s time to go to bed), but for my kids, TV makes me a little edgy.  Maybe if the consumerist thing and the gender trap thing weren’t my two other pet peeves, it wouldn’t make me so uncomfortable, but TV and film and video games many websites are so steeped in those two quagmires that it becomes a bit hard for me to disentangle screen time and think about it on its own terms.  As an adult, I’m comfortable making my own decisions and watching as a critical thinker.  When it comes to children, though, the media make me squirm.  Why? Hmm. Where to begin?  

When it comes to screen time, most conscientious parents talk about content, asking what messages and information will my child be interpreting?  Is it violent? Is it educational? Is the language appropriate? Is it multicultural? Are there commercial messages embedded in it or surrounding it (see the consumer culture page for more)?  Is it sexist (see the gender rules page for more)? What values does it promote? These are excellent and important questions, and we need to keep asking them.

The good news is that there is a fair amount of good quality educational programming out there for television, as well as some exciting websites, and some worthwhile films.  So, if and when we want to draw on media, there are much better choices than there were even 5 years ago.

The bad news is that as screen time goes up, time spent engaged in other activities necessarily goes down (or at least the nature of the other activities is altered — c’mon, you know what multitasking feels like!).  Children who spend more time with television, video games, movies, and the Internet are shown to spend less time engaging in creative play, the foundation of healthy mental and emotional development (see the page on play for more information).  While being entertained is wonderful (who doesn’t love it?), it is a lower order experience in comparison to creating and participating actively in games, inventing and enacting dramatic play, building, using the artistic imagination, making music (or noise!), or tactile exploration of the physical world.  The Department of Education expresses concerns over television viewing, showing that as television viewing increases, reading proficiency decreases, particularly in high school aged kids.  In addition, their physical health may suffer as those who watch more television are less physically active and tend to be more disconnected from nature.  They are also more prone to be obese. 

As a bizarre anecdote - About a decade ago I went through this period in which I started having these crazy cravings for burgers and french fries. I wanted them all the time - fast food specifically.  It took me about 8 weeks to figure it out, but I eventually realized that it was related to a research project I was conducting.  I was gathering data on children’s Saturday morning programming, but was not interested in commercials, so I fast forwarded through them (pre-tivo — I had to use VHS and just press FF until the program came back on…).  But the cartoon hour was so thick with ads for Burger King and McDonalds, that I was fast forwarding through tons and tons of these commercials and just watching them in FF without sound was enough to get me jonesing. Isn’t that amazing? I was blown away when I realized what was happening. I felt like such a sucker! I suppose no corporation is going to spend millions of dollars year after year investing in marketing unless they have reason to believe that it works.  It does. I’m living proof! 

So, my feeling is that entertainment media are wonderful and I want my kids to enjoy the pleasures they offer, but in small doses — so that they can go out and play and be and do and explore and create and enjoy their imaginations and, once in a while, maybe even feel what it feels like to be quiet and still (neither of mine seem to have tried this yet, but I’m an optimist).

What does this mean? Well, the space we landed with our daughter was to respect the AAP recommendation for no screen time until age two.  We introduced Sesame Street here and there after she turned two, and by the time she was a little over three we started periodically doing other things - watching some excerpts from the Sound of Music (How DO you solve a problem like Maria?), Charlotte’s Web, etc.  But, we have had no struggle over media (yet), I think this is at least in part because we never allow her to see us watching TV (my affair with the boob tube is clandestine — the post bedtime hours), so it rarely enters her mind as something that one would do.  We are able to say “sure” pretty much whenever she asks, because it is so infrequent.  Once in a while WE suggest it — long drives… I kiss the portable DVD player for making us all feel more restful on our 6-8 hour journeys to visit family!  But all in all, I have no complaints.  Some odd weeks she might watch 2 or even 3 hours of DVDs or Sesame Street (she’s yet to see anything on commercial TV, now that I think about it), especially if she’s been sick and doing couch time, but it would also not be odd for two or three whole weeks to go by without any viewing at all.  It’s pretty nice. I dread when she does start asking to watch programs on commercial TV that she learns about from others, but we’ll probably say yes if it’s important to her (avoiding the forbidden fruit once again) — and maybe get a TiVo to get rid of the commercials! 

 This is what has worked for us, you do what works for you, this is what makes things interesting. At any rate, here are some great links, if you are interested:

Media Awareness Network Resources for Parents - This Canadian nonprofit has many interesting resources and reports for parents. Look in the right hand column, particularly, where you can click on television, or movies, or internet, etc.

PBS Parents Resoucres on Children and Media - This site has some useful info (and some that is commonsense!).  The “articles” section at the bottom of the page is good. I like the TV viewer’s guide

Kaiser Family Foundation’s Report on Children and the Media- This is an in-depth report on a major study based on a nationally representative sample of over 2000 kids in 3rd through 12th grade.  It’s long — but don’t be intimidated by the 145 pages — many are appendicies, and you can skip the methodology section if its the findings you seek.  If you are interested, you can read it in an evening.