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.”