4.2 - The Media Diet

Kids are consuming a growing amount of media. There are two separate concerns about this trend: First, too much time in front of the television can leave little time for other activities. Second, the content of some television programming can be inappropriate, studies show sometimes harmful, for young viewers, and parents have too few tools available to determine television program content in advance.

On the first matter, a 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation report found that in the last five years the time young people spend exposed to media content each day (television, video games, DVDs, online, and music) has increased by more than an hour, to a total of eight hours and thirty-three minutes.⁶ This same study found that each day the average American young person spends the following amount of time with these top entertainment sources: three hours and fifty-one minutes of television and videos; forty-eight minutes online; forty-nine minutes playing video games; and one hour and forty-four minutes listening to music.⁷ This is per day, not per week, and shows a huge steady media diet.

The content in this media diet is troubling: By the time the average child gets to elementary school they will have viewed 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television.⁸ More troubling, the representation of violence is often overstylized, gung ho, and cartoonish, lacking both a strong moral and realistic foundation in much of American programming. Storytelling is reduced to a series of showy violent set pieces where character development is minimal. As Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, observed, “TV versions of violence are egregious, coarsening, and produce a social fear and anesthesia which damage our capacity to face reality.”⁹ But does exposure to television violence trigger real-life violence? It’s a debate that has raged for decades.

Some use the example of Japan to argue that exposure to televised violence doesn’t trigger real-life violence. This is because, as Todd Gitlin notes, “There is far more vile media violence— including more widely available violent pornography—in Japan than in the United States.” Yet Japan has a much lower rate of violent criminal offenses than we have in the United States. This information calls for a factual double take: Why the connection with increased violence here and not there? Something must be off, no?

Looking closely it’s clear that not only are there significant cultural differences between the two countries; there are also differences in how televised violence is presented in Japan. “One study found that the portrayal of violence in Japan vastly differs from that in the United States,” writes Dr. Eugene Beresin, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, in Academic Psychiatry. “In Japan the violence is more realistic, in that the pain and suffering associated with the violent act is emphasized. Also, the violence is mainly committed by the villain against the hero; therefore, acts of violence are associated with bad people and seen as inappropriate and immoral.”¹⁰ Clearly other factors are at play here.

The debate rages in communications circles, many arguing that culture and context of the media violence is a key factor in the impact on the viewer. “The [Japan] argument assumes that media violence is the only, or major and always decisive, influence on human and social behavior,” suggests George Gerbner, former dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. “Media violence (or any other single factor) is one of many factors interacting with other influences in any culture that contribute to real-world violence,” he concludes.¹¹

Here in the United States, researchers, led by Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., professor of radiology, at the Indiana School of Medicine, are gaining clarity that media violence does make an impact by reaffirming the connection between viewing violent media and increased violent behavior in a study released in June of 2005. This study concluded that exposure to media violence may alter brain function whether or not the viewer has had previous aggressive behavior. William Kronenberger, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, who collaborated on the study, was quoted saying, “There are myriad articles showing that exposure to violent TV especially causes individuals to be more aggressive. We are studying the neurological and self-control processes that underlie the aggressive behavior.”¹²

Sexual media content is also increasing, and has been shown to be quite influential on kids’ behavior. A study released in November of 2005 found that the number of sex scenes on television has nearly doubled since 1998, with 70 percent of 2005 shows including some sexual content.¹³ There are important real-life implications to this increase in sexual content: Teens who regularly watch television shows with sexual content are significantly more likely to have sexual intercourse than those who do not.¹⁴ Kids also have increased access to television, and a tremendous number of children have a television in their bedroom (68 percent of eight to eighteen-year-olds)¹⁵ where parents have little control over how much time children are spending watching television or what types of programs kids choose. Not surprisingly, kids with televisions in their bedrooms watch more by nearly an hour and a half per day, than those that don’t. Many organizations advocate getting televisions out of kid’s bedrooms and into a public place in the home so families can decide both content and time issues together.¹⁶

Studies show that television content can have a big impact on children’s behavior, and the consequences of children viewing glamorized sexual and violent content that is devoid of any realworld context on television is undoubtedly something parents, communities, and governments shouldn’t overlook. There is substantial controversy about where to draw lines for appropriate content in broadcast television. No matter where that line gets drawn, it is possible to find common ground that gives parents the ability to choose what is appropriate for their own homes and for their children to view.

Children, however, still need guidance. It’s important to set a healthy media diet for children—adult supervision and media content discussions, setting limits to TV viewing time, taking the time to choose appropriate programming, utilizing technologies like the V-chip and lock boxes, taking TVs out of kids’ bedrooms, or even the old fashioned “Off” button are needed to do so.

As a community we need to insist on the consistent enforcement of reasonable Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations that allow parents to choose what is showing in their own homes. The FCC doesn’t have consistent standards that are easy for television broadcasters to understand and, by many accounts inconsistently enforces regulations. This is troublesome because parents need accurate information in order to make informed decisions about television viewing. If something is rated TV-G (general audiences), then the program should consistently have TV-G content.

The FCC needs to provide clarity on their regulations, including clarifying reasonable place, time, and manner restrictions, so parents can make educated selections. The bottom line is there are no clear standards. (It should be noted that the FCC has quite different regulations for cable content than television broadcasters. This is mainly because the FCC licenses television broadcast companies to use the public airways, while cable companies send their programming over privately owned and maintained cables.)

Ultimately, children need to learn how to screen content on their own to become media literate adults. Perle notes that since media is a fact of life: “Children have to exercise their non-media muscles, but media literacy has to be placed along reading,writing, and arithmetic as an educational survival skill. It has to be up there as part of a twenty-first century education.”

4.3 - High Tech Options for Parental Content Control

A Blues Brothers poster, framed diplomas, awards, and bookshelves covered the beige walls of Tim Collings’ office at Simon Fraser University in Canada where he taught engineering. He looked up from reviewing reports when someone came in and told Tim there had just been shootings at a similar engineering school, the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. It was December of 1989. Fourteen women were killed and thirteen women injured, after Marc Lepine, who was denied entrance to the school, went on a rampage with a semi-automatic rifle. The carnage ended when Lepine turned the gun on himself.

After hearing the news, Tim went in search of a television. He got up from his L-shaped desk, passed the wall of books, and walked into the main engineering lab. This big 5,000 square foot lab room was out his office door, and he walked though it—past tables full of various electrical equipment, including power supplies, electric oscilloscopes, and digital multimeters that people were using for research and development—and into a video conferencing room on other side of lab where there was a television. He was horrified as he watched the reports of the massacre.

The shootings deeply affected Tim, “It was a shocking thing you don’t expect to happen—this man walked into a lecture room with a machine gun and at the end of the day there were fourteen students killed and then he shot himself.” Tim listened to updates on the radio, watched the news, and later read reports. Everyone was asking, “Why?” including Tim.

Then Tim read the report detailing the fact that searchers found a library of violent video material in the murderer’s apartment. There were a number of news stories about connections between increased violence and media consumption. Something clicked for Tim.

As an engineer and inventor, Tim knew how to bring ideas into reality. “If you’re an inventor you come across problems every day and start thinking about solutions—this thing popped out to me as a problem,” recalls Tim. Tim figured there are two ways to help stem the tide of increasingly violent media into homes: The first is censorship that eliminates violence at the source. The second lets the viewers decide what they allow into their homes. Tim took the second approach.

Figuring out that broadcasters could include age-appropriate rating information in television transmissions (in the same way close caption text for the hearing impaired was already included); he developed a device to receive these program rating codes that could be built into television sets and act as a filter based on user preference. This idea turned into the V-chip. It took Tim about six months to develop a prototype and over a decade to deal with corporate and government policies to get the rating and filtering system up and running.

Tim’s invention from Canada is closely tied to the United States because, as he says, “We passed similar regulations in Canada, but the consumer electronics association which is the umbrella organization that coordinates television manufacturers has headquarters in Washington, D.C. So if you want to deal with the television manufacturers then you have to go through D.C. because North America is really one entity, and most products that get into Canada go through the United States.”

Dealing with the manufacturers was essential in order to get the V-chip integrated into each newly made television. Tim comments, “The FCC in the United States has a lot more clout and when they put legislation in place that restricts the sale of televisions without V-chips then it really has to happen.” His strategy was that if he could get the FCC to require V-chips in televisions, then the television manufacturers and broadcasters would use the same systems in Canada. His strategy paid off. By lobbying the United States Congress and FCC he was able to pass requirements for the V-chip system that were also implemented in his home country.

V-chips are now incorporated into all new televisions manufactured since 2000.¹⁷ The television program rating system from which the V-chip gets its information is also up and running. Federal law now mandates that almost all television shows are rated so the viewing public can determine what they want showing in their homes. The ratings designations are: TV-Y (all children); TV-Y7 (age 7 and above); TV-G (general audience); TV-PG (parental guidance suggested); TV-14 (parents strongly cautioned); TV-MA (mature audiences only).¹⁸ These designations can be used with the V-chip as a filter, or to select appropriate programming in real time.¹⁹

There is a high degree of consumer confusion about media rating designations. With different rating systems for television, video games, movies, and other media this isn’t surprising. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found very few parents of young children, less than half of those surveyed, understand the television ratings for their child’s age group (TV-Y7 and TV-Y). And even fewer parents understand the content-based rating designations: Only 5 percent knew the D rating was for suggestive dialogue, while 62 percent knew V is for violence.²⁰ On top of this problem is the fact that many of the ratings for individual programs are inaccurate: A University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health study published in May of 2005 found the number of violent acts in a movie wasn’t always correlated with the rating the movie was given.²¹ Clearly we need an independent uniform rating system with consistent content categories that crosses all media to avoid parental confusion and allow better consumer choices.

Another important issue is that very few people know they have a high tech content controlling tool, the V-chip, in their household. A survey in 2001 found that while 40 percent of families owned a television with a V-chip, only 17 percent were actually using it. This is, in part, because most families with V-chips in their televisions don’t even know they have one (53 percent). Of those that do know, substantially less than half use it.²² Educating more parents how to use the V-chip can help parents control what’s showing in their living rooms.

Tim notes that the V-chip is fairly easy to use with a regular remote control. “You don’t need anything special. Take your remote control and use the menu button. If you push the menu button then you’ll see a number of different controls—in most sets, all new sets now, there is selection for parental controls and those controls at the minimum will allow you to set certain ratings, and some also have channel blocking and time allowances.”

New technologies like the V-chip give parents some ability to control the television content shown in their own homes. Other devices that allow parents to choose the programs available to their children include lock boxes, which are available from cable companies and allow people to lock out unwanted channels, and digital set-top boxes, which often have increased abilities to block programs based on information like ratings, program titles, and time.²³

Another way for individuals to control the television programming available in their homes is to allow people to simply pay for the channels they want to watch, and not pay for those they would have blocked. Many people call this “a la carte” program selection, or unbundling cable packages. Right now, people generally buy cable packages that come with several preselected channels together in one bundle. There is a movement to “unbundle” cable packages, i.e. allow people to buy only the channels they want in an a la carte fashion. While this option has been proposed by a wide variety of groups, from liberal-leaning consumer groups to conservative decency groups, it’s not yet available to consumers.

In 2004, U.S. Senator John McCain sponsored a bill that would have forced cable companies to have a la carte options available. Consumers still could buy bundled packages, but the option would be there for purchasing individual channels. The a la carte option is remarkably simple for consumers, but it’s rife with controversy mainly because cable companies are worried about how it will impact their bottom line. For this, and a number of other reasons, the 2004 effort failed.

Activists remain interested in continuing forward on this path, however. Josh Silver, Executive Director of Free Press, notes, “The real goal of a la carte is to ensure people, not cable companies, can decide what channels they receive and pay for in their homes. This is important because 98 percent of people in the U.S. only have the choice of one cable provider in the area, mainly because cable companies are inherently monopolistic due to the nature of the technology.”

Tim agrees that unbundling cable channels, or a la carte options, are part of the wave of the future. “It only makes sense for the industry to go that way at one point.” And, he notes, “The big future is IP (internet protocol) television where everything goes over the internet so your cable company or phone company would now be able to distribute video programming over the same connection. This will involve a more targeted reception of programming because there will be millions of program options that aren’t time based. There could still be V-chip type codes in the data to help sort.”

Often though, the time spent watching TV is more of a problem than the content. A fairly simple solution to both those issues is to simply turn off the television and do something else.

4.4 - Turning Off the Television and Getting Active

Lucas was fifteen and at loose ends. He wandered over to the local Boys and Girls Club after school was out a few times and played basketball on their outdoor court. He wasn’t thrilled with shooting and dribbling around outside. It just wasn’t that much fun. Then one day he ventured into the building to play basketball on the indoor court, and his life turned around.

He was standing at the double doors between the lobby and outside, about to leave the Club for the day, when a staff person, Mike, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Can I help you?”

Lucas responded, “No, I’m just going to take off.” Mike continued, “What’s your name?”

They introduced themselves, and then Mike asked Lucas, “Do you want to meet some people?”

Lucas responded, “Not really.” But Mike further explained to Lucas that the “people” were teenagers and Lucas responded, “Oh really, well I could do that.”

Matt led Lucas to the Teen Room at the Boys and Girls Club. As Lucas walked into the teen room, which had teen drawings and artwork plastered all over the walls, he saw a whole bunch of teens hanging out, and knew he found a fun place to be after school. “In the teen room there were guitars and magic cards, talking, break dancing, listening to music, regular cards, just hanging out. Two doors open right off into the gym so we could always go out and play basketball. There was always an adult teen director back there with you so things didn’t get out of hand,” recalls Lucas.

From then on Lucas started hanging out at the Boys and Girls Club after school. At first he mainly hung out with other teens and had fun. He loved listening to music, playing on the computer, and playing the guitar. Then one day one of the Sports Directors, Neal, pulled Lucas aside and asked if he could help coach a baseball team of ten- and twelve-year-old boys.

Lucas pitched in. Seeing he was doing well, Mike, the Team Director started getting Lucas more involved in the Keystone program, a high school community service program that does a wide variety of activities including tutoring students, setting up community events like car washes, and helping organize Teen Dance Nights every other Friday.

This is when Lucas’ life really started to change for the better, “I was tutoring younger kids, and from doing that it motivated me to do better. I was telling all these kids to work better and harder, but I wasn’t doing it myself so I figured I’d be a role model,” recalls Lucas. He continues, “Honestly I don’t think I would have graduated from high school. When I got there in ninth grade I wasn’t taking my studies very seriously. I slowly started taking my studies more seriously and ended up in the Running Start program where I started college in my senior year of high school.”

The Boys and Girls Club that Lucas attended has an Education Director who caters to up to fifty kids a week for tutoring, and regularly sets up times with older students or volunteers to work more extensively with a young child to give them extra academic help. They also have a “Power Hour” from 4 P.M. until 5 P.M. every weekday, which is a time when every kid in system does homework. After that it’s back to activities, fun, and games.

This after school program made a huge difference in Lucas’s life, he says, because, “I was spending every afternoon at the Club. It was a place of belonging and really was a second family.” Lucas lives with his mom, and she has to work full-time to support them both. She can’t be around after school.

Before Lucas found the Boys and Girls Club, he was home alone until 6 P.M. or 7 P.M. every weeknight, and he’d been doing this since about the fifth grade. “It’s hard to just be alone all the time. If I weren’t at the Boys and Girls Club I would be home— not doing homework, but playing video games, playing with my dogs, or watching movies.”

Studies show kids who go to formal after school programs watch less television, and have higher academic achievement as well as better social adjustment.²⁴ These advantages, combined with the fact that the peak time for juvenile crime is right after school gets out,²⁵ makes a compelling case for after school care options.

Communities are dealing with the need for after school care in many different ways. Several national organizations with local chapters have stepped up to the plate, including the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA. Many public schools provide after school curriculum and enhancement, as do some private schools. Often local churches and other nonprofit organizations step in to fill the void in after school programs in communities across America. Yet while there are countless creative ways communities are reaching out to children in the late afternoon hours, there still aren’t enough programs.

Right now, too few children have after school care. More than 40,000 kindergarteners are home alone after school, with a total of more than 14,000,000 kindergarteners through twelfth grade kids on their own after school without supervision.²⁶

“The reality is that most parents work. So kids need a place to go after school where they are safe and stimulated,” says Jodi Grant, Executive Director of the After School Alliance. “The truth is that even for families that have one parent at home, after school programs build social and other skills that they don’t learn during the day.” She comments that skills involving team work, dancing, drama, arts and crafts, physical fitness, and music are often highlighted in after school programs in ways that they can’t be during the school day.

Grant notes that after school programs can be crucial, “For most kids, after school care is an opportunity to get one-on-one mentoring and run around, but for at-risk kids after school programs can literally be the difference between graduating and jail.”

Providing after school care to at-risk youth not only benefits kids, but also the community coffers. A study of the effects of the After School Education and Safety Program Act of 2002 found that every dollar spent on an at-risk youth in an after school program brings a return of $8.92 to $12.90, mainly due to the amount saved by channeling the at-risk youth away from a life of crime (remember the juvenile crime rate is highest in the hours after school). Providing after school programs to nonrisk youth also brings a return (between $2.99 and $4.05 for every dollar spent) due to, in part, improved school performance and graduation rates.²⁷

There are other ways after school programs can benefit children: Combating the epidemic of childhood obesity is one. University of Otago, New Zealand, researchers recently confirmed the connection between television and obesity, and further added to the data by finding that time spent watching television was a greater predictor of future obesity than diet or exercise.²⁸

After school programs provide a different way for kids to spend their time than sitting in front of a television or other sedentary entertainment. “There’s new focus, rightly so, on childhood obesity and the fact that kids going home and plopping on the couch, possibly with chips, can contribute to that problem,” says Grant. “They can instead go and run around in an after school programs.”

4.5 - Designing a Better Program

Exposure to countless hours of mindless entertainment is particularly harmful during our children’s formative years. By assuming greater control of what we show in our own homes and increasing funding for after school programs, we can limit that negative exposure and offer positive alternatives with real benefits for our children’s wellbeing.

Parents are not without tools to help control the programming they allow their children to see, but the tools are insufficient compared to the flood of entertainment. Parents need help. They simply can’t do it alone. Unbundling cable channels so families can buy what they want to watch on their televisions and keep out what they don’t; setting a clear and consistent universal rating system for all forms of media; educating parents about how to use the technological controls available to them like the V-chip and lock-boxes; advocating that the FCC use its power to make sure content complies with the laws on the books and give better clarity about broadcasting standards; and working to ensure after school programs are funded and accessible are all important goals to work toward.

The violence, risky sexual behavior, and general bad modeling shown regularly on television come with a cost: Our youth are being taught life choices by stunt models and digital characters without any links to reality. The many channels of modern media have, to some degree, replaced the human community that used to nurture children. There is a fundamental need for mature adult guidance in an increasingly complex world. Investing in children now by giving their parents the tools they need to guide their children’s media consumption, and providing programs that connect youth to purposeful activities that inform their lives is something we as a society cannot afford to neglect.

4.6 - Manifesto Point "T"

Mothers are outraged by poor quality television programming because it’s harming our children. Mothers need help guarding our kids from exploitive television. It’s time for society to get serious about giving better options to kids who come home to an empty house after school. Moreover, mothers need after school programs to engage our kids in healthy and productive activities.

ACTION: Mothers want

1. A clear and independent universal rating system for parents and families, and meaningful public funding for quality educational programming.
2. Unbundled, al la carte cable packages so consumers can buy just the channels they want, and easy access to high tech devices for parents to better manage appropriate viewing in their own homes.
3. Increased access and funding for after school programs.