Cars!

EJ’s newest love is Cars!

Lighting McQueen, or Light MaPheen as EJ calls him, has replaced Thomas as the central figure in our household right now. I’ve seen the movie a handful of times in the past week and I don’t have any problems with it but I do feel a great concern with EJ’s media consumption.

The last class in my doctoral program was on children and the media. I was pregnant then and I remember making a commitment to carefully guide EJ in how he consumes media and now the time has come to make good on my commitment. EJ loves TV and wants to watch it constantly. He will melt down and cry when I tell him no more TV so it’s really hard to set those boundaries for him. I know we are at the national average for daily TV watching, but I am particularly fond of the "Auto-B-Good," the Emmy award winning series by Wet Cement Productions. They are cars who teach Godly principles and values. One of the main cars is named, "EJ" so that is special too.




Originally, TV was thought to be a great teacher for kids. Sesame Street was developed by Harvard professors to help disadvantaged preschool children prepare for school. It was a groundbreaking experiment, proving that the power of television could be harnessed to educate our nation’s children. Since then, the landscape has changed and not necessarily for the better as children are highly mediated at a young age and there is a lot of "crap" on TV.

Unlike previous generations, the computer screen isn’t any different from television screens so we have to be cognizant of all “screen” media in the lives of our kids. On average, children from 6 months to 6 years use 2 hours of screen media on a typical day. The usage number grows even larger with older children, tweens and teens with TV, movies, Internet, video games, etc.

There’s been much research on the impact of violent television content. A study by Joanne Cantor revealed that 75% of kids said they had been frightened by something they had seen on television or in a movie. I’m not worried about violence yet but I am concerned about the long-term socializing effects of media use.

The Children’s TV Act of 1990 tried to serve the educational and informational needs of kids but it only requires three hours per week of educational programming and the little “E/I” symbol on shows that meet the requirements. The same researcher I listed above, Cantor, also found that even though there are products like the v-chip, there are trends suggesting that the problem of children’s emotional lives being disrupted by TV programming may be worsening. This should be concerning to parents.

Another set of researchers poignantly describe our current situation. “Our society’s ambivalence about declaring what is good and healthy for children’s development is so unsettled that we have no mandate for what our young people need from TV is so steeped in commercialism that we have never resolved the parallel issue of what children deserve.”



I believe that children must be guarded from “electronic” teachers and trained on how to interpret the media, even at a young age. I want to remain EJ's parent and not hand my responsibilities over to the TV. While I believe it is unrealistic to prohibit him from watching TV,I am embarking on a media literacy plan for EJ to help him understand the media and protect his little eyes, heart and mind. Afterall, movies and apps on my iPhone have saved me numerous times on airplanes, at Super Target and at baseball events.

I welcome any ideas and feedback you may have or come upon. Let me know if you want to share information and ideas as we go along. My first recommendation is to visit the Common Sense Media Web site at http://www.commonsensemedia.org/. I like their site because they know families need trustworthy information to help manage their kids' media lives and they tailor their information to your kid's age group. Simply put, we can't do this on our own, we need a collaborative effort.