Kid's TV
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.Proverbs 4:23
“Imagine inviting a stranger into your home for two or three hours every day to tell your children all about a perverse world where violence solves problems and all anyone needs to be happy is the right beer, a fast car, good looks, and lots of sex.” According to Dr. Victor Strasburger, chief of the division of adolescent medicine at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, that is exactly what happens when parents use television as the baby-sitter and do not monitor what their children watch.
Recently, Dr. Strasburger addressed the American Academy of Pediatrics in Chicago. His visit was reported by Charles M. Madigan in the Chicago Tribune.
Dr. Strasburger said: “Ninety percent of the programming is detrimental to your child’s health, and it is a scary business. . . . America has the worst television for children and adolescents in the world . . . We have to instruct parents better about what the effects of television are and how they can mediate against those harmful effects.”
In addition to the poor content of most television shows, the amount of time that children spend in front of TV is also a great problem—23 to 27 hours a week by the average child. That is 23 to 27 hours that they are not outside playing, not reading books, not riding bicycles, not exercising, and so forth..
According to Strasburger, for many years the television networks and parents have been blaming each other. But both are at fault, and both can make changes. Obviously, the television networks can produce better shows (the pediatricians have recommended that every network provide at least one hour of quality children’s educational programming a day).
But parents should also get involved. Instead of using the television as a convenient baby-sitter, they should get involved with their kids, playing with them and directing them into creative uses of their free time. Parents should monitor the shows their kids watch. And they should have the courage to change channels or turn the TV off when something inappropriate, offensive, or wrong comes on. They could even put the entire family on a TV diet, limiting viewing to a few hours a week.
I know parents who do not own a television, and their children seem to be getting along fine. I know others who have refused to subscribe to cable because they don’t want MTV in their house and they figure they already have enough viewing options. I know a family who agreed to watch no television for a week. At first they suffered “withdrawal,” but soon they didn’t miss the tube at all.
Don’t invite that insidious stranger into your house. Consider pulling the plug.
“Imagine inviting a stranger into your home for two or three hours every day to tell your children all about a perverse world where violence solves problems and all anyone needs to be happy is the right beer, a fast car, good looks, and lots of sex.” According to Dr. Victor Strasburger, chief of the division of adolescent medicine at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, that is exactly what happens when parents use television as the baby-sitter and do not monitor what their children watch.
Recently, Dr. Strasburger addressed the American Academy of Pediatrics in Chicago. His visit was reported by Charles M. Madigan in the Chicago Tribune.
Dr. Strasburger said: “Ninety percent of the programming is detrimental to your child’s health, and it is a scary business. . . . America has the worst television for children and adolescents in the world . . . We have to instruct parents better about what the effects of television are and how they can mediate against those harmful effects.”
In addition to the poor content of most television shows, the amount of time that children spend in front of TV is also a great problem—23 to 27 hours a week by the average child. That is 23 to 27 hours that they are not outside playing, not reading books, not riding bicycles, not exercising, and so forth..
According to Strasburger, for many years the television networks and parents have been blaming each other. But both are at fault, and both can make changes. Obviously, the television networks can produce better shows (the pediatricians have recommended that every network provide at least one hour of quality children’s educational programming a day).
But parents should also get involved. Instead of using the television as a convenient baby-sitter, they should get involved with their kids, playing with them and directing them into creative uses of their free time. Parents should monitor the shows their kids watch. And they should have the courage to change channels or turn the TV off when something inappropriate, offensive, or wrong comes on. They could even put the entire family on a TV diet, limiting viewing to a few hours a week.
I know parents who do not own a television, and their children seem to be getting along fine. I know others who have refused to subscribe to cable because they don’t want MTV in their house and they figure they already have enough viewing options. I know a family who agreed to watch no television for a week. At first they suffered “withdrawal,” but soon they didn’t miss the tube at all.
Don’t invite that insidious stranger into your house. Consider pulling the plug.
posted by BT at 7:49 AM
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