Some of the unpleasant crap from my childhood.
Reader and frequent commenter MAJeff sent me a copy of Born to Buy by Juliet Schor, and I finally had a chance to read it this week. The book came out a few years ago, but all the trends she details in it are still going strong, namely the hyper-commercialization of childhood by marketers hungry to have a non-jaded audience that constantly replenishes itself. I found the book to mostly be fascinating, especially the second part where Schor conducts a research study on two populations of children, one in the city of Boston and one in a suburb, to see what kind of effect this increasingly commercialization had on the well-being of children, and found strong evidence that kids who watch excessive amounts of TV and otherwise engage in excessive amounts of participation in marketing to children suffered strongly for it both physically and mentally, and more to the point, that the engagement with the commercial culture caused the depression, anti-social behavior, excessive weight gain, lowered grades and other ill effects on children.
It’s an important book for this research, and I felt bad for parents because it seems that there’s really only one choice when faced with the hard evidence—limit TV-watching, exposure to fast food, toy collecting and other engagements with the mass media that markets to children. Which will cause fights and could cause your child to be unpopular and the target of bullies—seems like a real dilemma in a lot of ways. Schor admits that social pressures like this make opting out hard, but the fact that excessive exposure to commercialization has the long-term effect of making children less pleasant people, hopefully the social issues will balance out over time. (Obviously, if you’re an adult who weathered childhood with a rich, balanced life, you’ll be grateful for it, but the eventual benefits in adulthood probably seem very far away during the years of childhood.)
I thought the book had a lot of really great points about how fast food is marketed to kids, and toys, and just excess in general, and what ended up disappointing me was that Schor had a lot of trouble reining in the “moral panic” tone. She admits up front that this is always a concern, and argues pretty effectively that the overwhelming amounts of evidence that our materialistic culture is damaging kids has to be weighed in favor of this not being a moral panic tome. And mostly she’s right. But she keeps making minor and distracting accusations against marketers of employing explicit sexuality to sell to kids, when I don’t think that’s quite right. For instance, the existence of explicit sexuality in action figures or video games doesn’t necessarily mean those things are being sold to kids; more likely, the intended audience is the post-Boomer adults who (rightfully, to my mind) see no reason to abandon certain pleasures because they’ve been coded as “childish”. Instead, we simply reclaim them for adults. “Beavis and Butthead” may have been a cartoon, but it was not for children. And I got the impression at times that Schor wants to clean up adult entertainments to make them child-safe—she writes a lot about how kids watch adult TV, for instance—and I can’t help but think that’s unfair. I fully support making the world better for children, especially by giving them more things to do than watch TV all the time and making it safer for kids to play outside, but I draw the line at depriving adults of adult entertainment.
But my objections were minor, and just something that child advocates should keep in mind if they want to convince more people. Schor’s suggestions at the end are thorough and smart, and about remaking society so that children have a good place in it, not just band-aid solutions to the marketing problem. And I’d like to write more, but I’m already running way behind on this post, so I’ll leave it at that and figure that the commenting community will have plenty to add on these issues.
76 Responses to “Fewer pieces of plastic crap may indeed not kill you”
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I think this is the most important part of the book (glad you liked it, btw). Much of the rest of the book looks at the particular practices of marketing to children (the use of nag factors, the employment of parents as enemies, etc.), but this is where she actually does research into, and demonstrates, that more intensive integration into consumer culture is detrimental to kids. It’s not just media consumption, but media consumption as related to being integrated into a culture that values getting that reinforces the negative effects. It’s also the part of the book that my students, who love to consumer, are somewhat resistant. It’s easy to fall into the “it’s all the parents’ responsibility” camp without realizing that it’s the entire desire-creation industry that’s at fault for fucking people up.
I should probably add, just as a disclaimer, that Dr. Schor is the chair of the department where I’m doing my PhD, although she’s not on my committee and we work in completely different areas (I’ve used this text in Media and Society-type classes). There’s no vested interest or kissing butt, but I assume it’d be a good idea to disclose my relationship to Julie so that folks can take that into consideration.
I gues i’d have to read the book because i reflexively want to say that “it’s all the parents responsibility”. They can control their kids’ consumption of media and products, if they choose too.
It’s true that social pressure, and for that matter simply being social (i.e. allowing your children to play at other kids’ houses) does make opting out of the commercial culture difficult. But I believe an important defense against mass marketing is forming associations with other parents who feel the same way. And the more awareness and discussion there is of the situation, the more likely it is to find other parents with the same concerns.
It does kind of bother me that my reaction to over-commercialization, which is to attempt to insulate myself in a subculture that rejects some of the more obnoxious assumptions of the mainstream superculture, is a little like the self-isolation reaction of Anabaptists and home-school fundamentalists. It would be nice if instead, we could have some influence on that larger culture to make it less dehumanizing. But I guess it’s realistic to acknowledge that you can control your own actions and associations much more readily than you can move the mountains of capitalism.
Schor admits that social pressures like this make opting out hard, but the fact that excessive exposure to commercialization has the long-term effect of making children less pleasant people, hopefully the social issues will balance out over time.
The problem with opting out isn’t that it’s hard on the kids so much as it’s hard on adults to opt out, especially given that we’ve been programmed since we were kids to opt in. It takes some work for us as adults to break free from the consumerism that was pounded into us via breakfast cereal commercials and the like, but if we do it, the rewards are immense. I like to think I’ve done it, and that my daughter benefited from it, but it wasn’t easy.
I think that Tracy Grammer’s “Hey Ho” is a spot-on sardonic treatment of some aspects of our lovely toy industry and its place in the Planetary Dance of Hydrocarbons.*
YouTube link.
(Jefferson Airplane’s “Plastic Fantastic Lover” comes to mind as well.)
* via Black Dog Barking at WAAGNFNP: As to plastic kitsch and the planetary dance of hydrocarbons, I believe the technical name for the whole business is the Wisdom of the Marketplace.
Asking individual parents to stand up to the entire machinery of consumer capitalism is waging a bit of an unfair battle, dontcha think?
That’s one of the things Schor points out; these issues are structural and therefore require collective solutions. Some of the solutions are relatively easy. For instance, fund education so schools don’t have to use such things as Channel 1 (captive marketing–or at least get rid of the advertising aspect of it) or exclusive contracts with vendors or lesson plans formulated by corporations. Some of them–banning marketing to children under a certain age, for example–however, require collective action to pursue legilsative/regulatory mechanisms.
I’ll tell you, living my life somewhat out of tv and consumer culture make for a happier young adult as well.
That said, it’s easy to do when I and everyone I know, we’re all struggling college student/grad students/other people of the same age. Cause no tv=no cable bill, and not much money=not much buying. Choosing to not pay for things like cable, whereas other people of our age and situation do, does help to make us underfunded, rather than destitute. But, there does, I think has to be a mostly conscious realization somewhere along the line that cable tv is not up there with food and heat, and that we can opt out.
found strong evidence that kids who watch excessive amounts of TV and otherwise engage in excessive amounts of participation in marketing to children suffered strongly for it both physically and mentally, and more to the point, that the engagement with the commercial culture caused the depression, anti-social behavior, excessive weight gain, lowered grades and other ill effects on children.
Why is it that that statement gives me the “watch the hidden variables” heebie-jeebies?
Both/and Amanda.
Think Bratz. They market a overly-sexualized image to young girls, but what they market more is consumption. There’s a compression of youth that is due to both phenomena. I, too, agree with keeping adult entertainment around for adults, but I think the issues of age compression are also well argued. Britney’s Catholic School Girl was for both 9-year-old girls and 50-year-old men.
She did. Particularly relationships with parents. Integration in consumer culture provided a significant causal relationship to negative effects in emotional and physical health, social behavior and academic achievement. It had an interactional effect with media use; and relationship with parents had a different effect (protective, but greater integration in consumer culture chipped away at this relationship).
As I told my class in shorthand, the key to being happier isn’t getting more but desiring less. The more you get suckered in by the desire creation industries, the unhappier you are (after all, the key is never being able to fulfill the desires, always wanting–and therefore buying–more.)
It’s not at all hard on children to limit the amount of TV/advertising exposure they have.
We don’t own a TV. My kids see TV only at their friends’ houses. They are sociable, well-liked kids.
More importantly, they are able to entertain themselves–my eleven year-old reads voraciously, knits, embroiders, plays an instrument, doodles,daydreams, plays sports, reads some more.
My eight year-old draws, makes paper airplanes, plays outside, reads, draws some more.
And they both have trouble coming up with things they want for their birthdays, because they haven’t been saturated with advertising feeding them greed and dissatisfaction.
For birthdays this year my eleven year-old asked for a cell phone–got a Trac-phone with a monthly dollar-limit, and is overjoyed.
The eight year-old wanted two toys–a remote-controlled toy plane, and a plastic medeival knight on horseback. Got them both.
I’m the one that misses television, frankly.
But as long as I make sure we have a Superbowl date at someone else’s house, I’ve heard no complaints beyond the initial brief withdrawal period. And I’m not a scary parent–believe me, I would have heard!
there’s really only one choice when faced with the hard evidence—limit TV-watching, exposure to fast food, toy collecting and other engagements with the mass media that markets to children.
This is one of the few areas of parenting where my dad was not a total fuck-up. I had very little exposure to traditional childhood marketing, little enough that I barely missed it then and simply don’t miss it now. Nostalgia conversations are largely lost on me, but oh well.
Which will cause fights and could cause your child to be unpopular and the target of bullies—seems like a real dilemma in a lot of ways.
His problem in the implementation of this otherwise healthy strategy is that he demonized everyone who didn’t share his view–the parents and the children. They were bad families. We were better. That, more than missing out on whatever the hell was on TV during the 80s, was why I had very few friends.
To this day, I’ll still have my nose in a book rather than watching TV. There’s a lot of genuinely good television that I simply can’t get into. (See: BSG). The thing just doesn’t hold my attention. It’s hard for me to watch movies, too. I don’t mind. My attention span for reading is just fine.
Why is it that that statement gives me the “watch the hidden variables” heebie-jeebies?
She does. It’s a really well-run study that controls for the possibility of correlation and finds that it’s a causal relationship.
I think it makes sense. I can point to specific damage to my mentality from our commercial culture. With adults, it’s horribly degrading to our sex lives and ability to relate to each other. I often find my self esteem crippled by unattainable beauty standards shoved down my throat, but despite the fact that they are *literally* unattainable, I worry that they’re mandatory. And that’s for an adult. A feminist. Who sees through that shit.
I’ll still have my nose in a book rather than watching TV.
Which is why, if I’m honest, I’m addicted to the internet.
So much to read. So little time.
I’m all against overly commericalized popular culture, but I’ve got to draw the line at dissing He-man. We need him more than ever now that Skelator is Vice President . . .
How can she claim causality with the type of study described?
Also, I would never say “It’s all the parents’ responsibility” because i don’t think the quality of a child’s life should depend on the actions of that child’s parents.
Also, i recently read this book:The Case Against Adolescence. A lot of what was in it were things I’d always thought. The author seemed to have a right-wing bias, and that emerged at times, but overall it was a well-laid-out argument.
Unfortunately, my copy of the book is at the office. However, there are techniques for determining the direction of statistical relationships.
This pretty much sums up the conundrum of parenting in mass culture. And I wish it was as easy as limiting exposure to TV and staying away from fast food. We try to do that with our three year old - he watches a little bit of TV - non-commercial stuff and the occasional movie - but even those are advertisements for toys. The boy’s never stepped foot in a fast food restaurant, but he sure as hell knows what McDonald’s is. Every time he steps out the door he’s faced with mass culture, especially given that just about every public space is plastered with advertising. It drives us batty.
I get a lot of shit from a friend of mine who’s a programming director for PBS Kids. She tells me that their programming is developmentally appropriate - and I don’t think she’s wrong - but it’s still pretty much a cross-marketing opportunity for related toys. The day that my parents introduced the little one to Thomas the Tank Engine was the day that he became infatuated with Thomas toys. And don’t even get me started on the industrial politics of that show - thank the universe for Click, Clack, Moo!
At any rate, it’s a struggle, and MAJeff is right - this isn’t a matter of deciding to opt out. The problems associated with hyper-consumerism require collective solutions.
I have said this before but here goes anyway…
here in Japan it is still normal to see children playing in groups in the street, wandering around at night on their own, walkign to and from school on their own, and generally being children. I hadn’t realised living in Australia how much children were slowly disappearing from public life until I came here. The sight of a little line of 5 or 8 year olds walkign to school by themselves, all carrying butterfly nets, really does civilise the public space in a way I had forgotten.
There are many reasons for this I’m sure, but I think they are more sophisticated than consumer culture. After all, this is the land of the playstation and the kiddies’ toys, so why is it that you still see little children chasing butterflies in summer? I think the more subtle reasons are:
1. far less cars, smaller cars, a 50km/hr speed limit and no culture of aggressive car use - as well as everyone using bicycles - makes it safe for children to wander about by themselves
2. no culture of fearing children. In a low crime society, children are not considered a threat - a group of 14 year old boys is not a gang or a risk, and not seen as anti-social
3. no fear of children’s sexuality. Japan lacks the guilt and shame about sex which Westerners have, and doesn’t think that a couple of kids out late at night represent a moral danger
I think we could all learn something from this combination of physically and morally “safe” public spaces. It makes a big difference to childrens’ lives and I’m sure it heavily affects their adulthood.
One of the things that the increasingly unequal culture of the US does for researchers like Schor is to give them a really broad range of degrees of integration and of TV-centrism. (Remember the news in July that young kids with television sets in their rooms had this that and the other problems with learning and socialization…)
It’s kinda scary, once you start noticing it, how thoroughly the culture of having permeates everything. (Try finding a hallowe’en costume for a kid that isn’t a licensed character.) At our local public library, there’s a little table with trains for the little kids to play with. And darned if some of them don’t know the name of every single car by the time they can form complete sentences.
rea skelator is acted by Chertoff, not Cheney.
As for the post, I pretty much concur.
Thing is, I don’t think all of our tv is commercial in intent. There has been quite a few times when I’m watching Heroes, and some twitchy paranoid part of me starts wondering about the intent behind some of the messages that it sends. I tend to think of shows like Heroes as being very sneakily propaganda.
I don’t have money to buy stuff. I do tend to think I need stuff like an mp3 player, computer, soundsystem, sony ereader, that sort of thing. I judge whether I’m being stupid by whether I *use* it or not. It’s the whole ethos of disposability that really gets people, since it’s so understated within all the consumerism.
One way in which all television is commerical is that eyes are being sold. While broadcast television may have established a particular relationship (advertisers sponsoring programming–broadcasting model) and cable anoter relationship (subscribers purchasing programming, which is simultaneously sponsored by advertisers–narrowcasting model), all television relies upon the relationship between audience, advertiser and programmer. In other words, all programming is geared toward drawing a particular audience to a particular set of advertisers; all programming is about realizing profit and is therefore commercial in some way.
Boy, can I relate to this. I’m 6′5″, ~185#, and trying to lose some weight because my pants with a 32″ waist are uncomfortably tight and I live in complete fear of getting fat (my computer died and I just bought a new machine, so lots of new pants no longer an option)–being the object of the male gaze in a mass-mediated, desire-producing, sexualizing and sex-negative culture of consumption can produce some fucked up results, even among those able to analyze the relationships and understand the processes. I still hate my body.
And Amanda, I can point to strong specific benefits that come from me being a life-long television addict, including my entire professional writing career (I’m about to start on my second book, a volume on Battlestar Galactica), a lot of self-confidence that came from interacting with people who cared about TV, and being able to cope with being an iconoclast at a hideous huge conservative high school thanks to finding the other Trekkie girls in my grade and bonding with them. So does that make us both right, both wrong, or….what?
I don’t know. I agree that overcommercialization is bad, but I think you and Schor take the easy way out by conflating televisual media with overcommercialization, and then don’t offer viable action plans.
It’s not even as if the point she’s making is new: the ease of the answer and the fact that this answer is and has been approved by a certain kind of white middle-to-higher-class person with a strong preference for the written word, as well as noting that these same people have, to my mind, exceptionally low “media resistance” for lack of a better way to call it. (Ie, I mean anecdotes my horror at learning that my fellow English lit grad student colleagues thought TV was evil and mind-numbing…and then discovering it was because the TV they watched was overwhelming sh*t like Elimidate and Judge Judy…) Is Schor saying ANYTHING new? And is it AT ALL productive to call on limiting media when we’re admitting that’s quite difficult?
To my mind, the question is how to create media resistance strategies, where, we become non-passive targets for Axe Shower Gel commercials and bad reality TV. We can’t opt out, and that’s an infantile fantasy that shows a certain sort of snobbery for “low” culture anyway; it’s also a fantasy that comes out of a certain kind of cultural capital where alternate methods of entertainment are as easy to obtain as TV and provide as many entry points, as well as factors like how too much TV probably correlates with the virtual imprisonment of children and teenagers in the US in the house and not on the public square. (I don’t know if Schor pays attention to this or not; not clear from the review.) Taking away Avatar: the Last Airbender sounds great in theory, and sure, it’s maybe not so bad for the child who can easily identify with Harry Potter, or Spiderman, or who has the cultural background to move into “classic” literature with few bumps. Were I a Latino parent, however, I might very well opt for Dora the Explorer and Ugly Betty over A Little Princess or even Harry Potter, y’know?
MAJeff, That’s just it. I don’t think it’s always about selling eyeballs. I *do* think some of the tv shows are explicitly crafted to promote a certain viewpoint. I *know* that shows that explicitly violate certain themes can get yanked off the air or be tampered with, ElectionNight!Jack Welch style. Angel, for instance, was canceled about a week or two before the “Smile Time” episode, and I have a very hard time believing that the upcoming episode didn’t have a great deal to do with the nonrenewal of Angel for the intended season 6. (Do watch that particular episode, even if you don’t like the Buffyverse, funny as hell).
“Which will cause fights and could cause your child to be unpopular and the target of bullies”
Please don’t underestimate the psychological damage of this while trying to minimize other damage.
flashheart:The problems are pretty prevalent in Canada as well, although probably a few years behind the curve.
I call it GOML syndrome Get Off My Lawn! Syndrome the changeover from public places as being..well..public, to places where only the prim and proper (and usually old) are allowed to enjoy has been going on for pretty much all my life. Suburbs are built without any sort of thought to recreation of the youth.
In any case, my standard reply is this a presentation given by Danah Boyd which everybody should read for a variety of reasons. Read The Whole Thing.
In short, the combination of the elimination of youth-based public-private spaces and increased pressures on said youth combine to explain a lot of the problems you see today.
Unfortunately, as long as consumerism and culture are linked so tightly, things probably won’t change, and are best accustomed to. I’m not even sure you can separate the two. I don’t think just turning your back on culture is an alternative either.
there’s really only one choice when faced with the hard evidence—limit TV-watching, exposure to fast food, toy collecting and other engagements with the mass media that markets to children.
Yeah, it’s hard to be a mean parent, but really the difficult part is in the first 5 years. Teaching my kid that it’s not my job to entertain her, but that in fact she has dozens if not hundreds of things to work on at her skill level in this house, wasn’t hard…once she had developed sufficient skills to be able to do things that interested her.
It was really, really hard to resist the urge to allow TV to keep her busy when she was younger and had some impairments that made a lot of tasks outside her strike zone. For example, a 3 year old who doesn’t speak, has asign vocabulary limited by that of her hearing parents, who lacks the muscle tone to open the container of bubble stuff let alone fishing out the wand without dumping the bottle, is really hard NOT to entertain.
OTOH, I bet it’s hard to live with an overentitled, materialistic kid.
I strongly dispute the contention that depriving children of broadcast TV and sharply limiting screen time means that they will be socially affected. I know this isn’t typical, but where we live it’s within our budget: My kid has a pony. For her birthday she wished on a star for…the real wooden barn, Barbie-sized to fit her plastic horses, with fencing and all the accessories, from Costco. She got up at 0-dark-thirty to play with it before school. This is a child whose age peers are into Bratz and Hannah Montana. But we’ve just not chosen to open the electric lightbox containing Toon Disney.
We can always acculturate her to consumerism next year, right?
I gues i’d have to read the book because i reflexively want to say that “it’s all the parents responsibility”. They can control their kids’ consumption of media and products, if they choose too.
And how many kids do you have locked in the closet of your home in the vast rural recesses of Alaska?
Thought so. Only someone who doesn’t have kids or who is living in a fairyland of isolation would think it would be that simple.
Oh, and you’d have to make sure they never learn how to read.
Isolation/insulation is not a workable answer. My kids go outside and see the HOOD blimp, among others, orbiting sporting events in the area. Buy even healthy food, like carrots in a bag, and there’s some chance it will have a kid friendly ad on it!
Like it or not, they will be exposed to this crap one way or the other. Even if you limit access, they will still be exposed to it. The trick is to get them to TALK BACK to it.
Speaking of isolated caves … Welcome Back Jeff!
Also, I think Amanda’s point about the scolding to dumb down all of TV’s content to make it appropriate for kids is one that deserves some attention.
As the parent, it is in fact my job to protect my child from adult themes and ideas and language. It is not Comedy Central’s job to clean up Jon Stewart’s monologue so my 4th grader can write a current events report based on The Daily Show.
It’s straightforward to avoid that content by avoiding TV for the kid. So what would be really cool and supportive from the non-child-raising adults who want their MTV and Chapelle Show and violent, cussing, sexual content on their TV channels, would be accompanying that desire with advocacy for child-friendly public spaces. It’s also really helpful when the child-free take on some of the inconveniences of sharing the world with children, like driving at reasonable speeds on side streets. Easy, free, friendly stuff like that means a lot to parents.
In my neighborhood there are several rental houses which are always occupied by grad students or recent graduates. I make a point to engage the new tenants every fall, let them know that on our block the kids play in/near/around the street, and welcome them to report anything they see our kid doing that seems unusual. None of them has ratted her out yet but I know that several have slowed down traffic or quieted the high school kids’ parties.
Shorter: If you want grownup TV, keep the kids playing outside where they belong!
And how many kids do you have locked in the closet of your home in the vast rural recesses of Alaska?
Well, it’s not quite as bleak as locking her in the closet, nor quite as isolated as rural Alaska, but…yeah, it can be done. So far. N=1, mitigating circumstances, YMMV.
However, your point that teaching media literacy is vital is not lost on me. We play a game, during March Madness and occaisonal regular-season broadcasted games: What Are They Selling? Mute the sound and watch the commercials, and it can be quite challenging to figure out what they want you to buy.
The game, of course, teaches that the purpose of TV is to make you want to buy stuff, but the kid puzzled out on her own that ‘ladies in bathing suits’ are not an end in themselves, they’re a tool to get consumers to buy things.
I think the consumerism on TV is an excuse and a filler for people whose kids have been dragged off the street, but it’s not the cause of these problems. The cause is our (adults’) insistence on turning our adult world into a place that is dangerous or unwelcoming to people who want to entertain themselves under their own steam, in public.
When I was a child playing soccer in the street was the preferred form of entertainment for all boys under 15. This meant spending maybe 2-4 hours of your time with a couple of your friends, kicking a ball around and making a lot of noise in quite a confined high-density suburban area. Most kids these days can’t do that because their parents would be scared to let them on the street, mostly because of cars; but even if they did, the neighbours would be down on them like a ton of bricks.
So is the issue here commercialism on TV? All my friends when I was a kid were buying star wars toys (this was back when the original star wars came out, it pretty much led the way on those toys), I was obssessed with lego, etc. But we still played soccer 4 hours a day. The difference was that we had a choice - public space or private space, either was ours. And on top of that, it was safe for us to move from one public space to another independently of the adult world.
When I see the way kids are ferried around and kept inside in the modern world, it dos make me sad. But I don’t think it’s commercial TV - I think it’s us.
Shorter: If you want grownup TV, keep the kids playing outside where they belong!
or, you know, have respect for and integrate children INTO the lives of adults.
There is no surer way to make kids engage in a behavior than to tell them in any capacity that an activity or substance is for adults, not them. Because most children see themselves as smart and mature and able to handle it, and honestly they’re right more often than not. Kids aren’t stupid, nor do they belong in some other sphere away from adult things. The surest step to better television is to stop insulting the intelligence of the audience, regardless of age. Grownup and suitable for children are not mutually exclusive ideas.
There is no better evidence of this than Animaniacs. Back when I was a wee lad, I enjoyed it for the slapstick, the clever banter, and even some of the more cerebral stuff like The Brain. My father, however, loved watching it because of witty pop culture references, banter that flew right over the head of children, and jokes that simply make no sense unless you know something (Dr Scratchensniff, walking psychologist joke. kids don’t GET psychologist jokes).
Raise the bar on the lowest common denominator, and the lowest common denominator will rise to meet it. Because in spite of everything horrible and stupid we witness around us, people are actually pretty fundamentally good and smart.
I don’t watch TV. Having grown up on video games and computers, I find TV watching far too passive. I need to be involved.
Oh, and kids these days DO get psychiatrist jokes. At least I did, because I got sent to psychiatrists.
“Why is it that that statement gives me the “watch the hidden variables” heebie-jeebies?”
She did. Particularly relationships with parents.
Parental availability? Time spent in social activities? Scoio-economic status? Time spent working?
Yeah, yeah - I know. I’ve got the friggin’ thing on reserve at the local public library, and I shall go through it in my copious spare time, along with the other five or six books on my reading pile.
This place is worse than some third year course I’ve taken.
Anecdata alert: My boys, 7 and 11, never watch TV. They just don’t. They’d rather play with Legos and go outside and make “bows” out of sticks and strings. I don’t know why they don’t like TV. Probably the commercials.
HOWEVER: They LOVE their stupid friggin’ handlheld game thing-ies, and we regret the day we (I) ever bought the damn things. ARRRGGGHHH.
On the plus side, their obsession with the handhelds has made it abundantly clear that we will never buy them a bigger game system. And they know it.
You can find other kids to hang out with that are not obsessed with commercialism. It is a hard battle sometimes. One of my son’s friends said the other kids at school call him “poor.” I said, “Why? Because you don’t have X-Box and Wheely shoes and crap like that?” He agreed that was why. I laughed and said, “Good. Then we’ll be ‘poor’ right with you.”
As for taking kids out — teach ‘em how to behave politely in public, stay on them to make sure they do, and enjoy the outing.
Don’t worry. You’ll get your life back when you’re 50 or 60.
From 2001 to about a month ago, we lived in my household without cable or satellite TV. My sons went from ages 4 and 11 to ages 10 and 17 without it. For most of those years, we have had a subscription to Netflix, and we have approximately 17 bookcases full of books, many of them kid friendly. We also, since about two years ago, have a computer reserved just for the kids (with parental watch software on it that both kids are aware of).
I found that eliminating commercials from the kids lives, while commenting on what few commercials they did see caused them both to become rather cynical about advertisements on television.
Neither of my sons has lost popularity because they’re not chronic television watchers (even with the satellite TV, only my husband watches more than maybe two hours a day. I still watch less). Because we make movie watching a social event (often complete with popcorn), we find that our sons don’t get caught up in many of the traps that come with unsupervised viewing, even though they have both regularly watched movies that are not geared to children.
The ‘programming’ is everywhere. It’s incredibly pervasive.
Our local Meijers has these huge ugly red carts that have a place for kids to sit inside and ‘watch’ a small teevee screen. Programming for the little ones.
I railed and ridiculed my sister for using those ‘kids videos’ to ‘baby sit’ and occupy her offspring’s time while she was off doing other things. I lived in fear of the ‘pod people’ effect of seeing ‘Barney’ the perverted dinosaur dancing and prancing around the screen or ‘Sponge Bob’ or even ‘Bob the Builder’.
The ‘world’ that they preach isn’t much like the real, reality based one that consumes our every waking moment.
I am concerned at the number of violent games. It disturbs me that the Army (of Bush) uses video games (in a ‘Last Starfighter-esque’) marketing ploy.
We, society and the industries, are programming hyperactivity and hyper violence and hyper sexuality into the accepting brains of our children. Not unlike 1984, if I still remember my post apocalyptic movies. (Brave New World?)
Parents whould be far less trusting of the capitalistic baby sitter and far less trusting of Ronald McDonald and the incredibly freaky Burger King. Wendy effectively died of a heart attack. How fitting…
The programming is EVERYWHERE and it’s constructed to catch eyes and twist programmed brains.
Meanwhile, the ‘Great Bush Economy™’ is built on the profit of having our once made in America junk being made in China and god really knows where for slight fractions of the cost of manufacture before and since the price to purchase hasn’t gone down this creates a huge bubble that is lifting the CEO sect of our society to ever higher levels. Only the quality has changed just as the quality of our society has changed, for the dramatically worse.
What was that Confucius saying? ‘May you live in interesting times.’ My hope is that it doesn’t get much more interesting…
I did have a conversation with someone last year. I said that what is happening in our society is making me profoundly sick and somewhat anxious. That I see the lies (like reading the falling matrix in the matrix), I can see the effects and the fear… They said that it was better to know the lie and to know the traps and be able to avoid them. I wasn’t so sure… I’m still not convinced. In a land of people that choose to be blinded, what hope do the seeing have of convincing those that don’t want to be convinced. Someone who CHOOSES to be ignorant is more dangerous than someone who IS ignorant, IMO.
I worry about the future. America, in the past six years, almost seven, has been afflicted with a near terminal case of runaway capitalism. More so than at any point in our past.
Someone wrote an article about how human evolution will create two classes of people. One the good looking thinking and intelligent, the other the lumbering brain fried grunt worker class. We’re already there.
I have the book. I’ve been too afraid to read it…
I still wonder what kind of parent I would have been…
Yes, WELCOME BACK, MA Jeff- lots of hugs and kisses!!
This is especially poignant for me today; 24 hours ago I was filling out forms describing my 12 year old daughter for police, wardens, and bloodhound rescue groups- we woke at 5:30am to find that she had run away. For the first and hopefully only time… absolutely the worst day. Worse than my sister’s suicide last Christmas.
Mary was located by 7:15 am by a neighbor going to work, about a half mile away down a camp road by a lake. The neighbor, a USM professor, walked her to the nearest home and the couple there called the police- Mary had put her bike and her backpacks in a ditch and was scared to come home, even though she could here me calling her name in the dark.
The police were here when they got the call that she had been found so I was notified immediately; I called Charlie who was out driving and looking for her, so he went straight to where she was. She told me he said nothing- just hugged her tight and she could feel him shaking and crying. Neither of us yelled at her at all, which surprised her. We were just so damned scared.
Mary is okay, but shook up- as were we. She has been struggling with her grades (7th grader) and we knew that, but we also had sat down with her and her teachers a month ago and were helping her- we’re now going to look into tutors and the school mentoring program. But more than that, she says the reasons she panicked and felt she wanted to leave include the incredible peer pressures. High on the list of pressures is the insane commercialism described here- she is perfectly content with what she has, but is ridiculed by some kids for not having her own cell phone, MP3, I-Pod, etc- let alone that we don’t go see every movie and buy all of the schlock.
We’re lucky- she came home safe and sound. But I could have lost my daughter to a predator or being struck by a car in the dark because of the pressures inside her. We have an appointment with my former grief therapist, who also works with anxiety and family issues. She is not grounded- this was a desperate cry for help from a child who can write down her concerns and fears, but cannot speak about them. But she now understands that we DO know, are listening, and are going to help her find a way to deal with this and make better choices.
She cuddled in my lap last night for an hour for the first time in YEARS- she’s 5′1″ and 105 and these old hips felt it! But it was worth every second. I just can’t stop crying, even now- my girl is HOME, SAFE and OKAY.
Pinky:Everything you said has less effect than the greed capitalist culture. Not what they do, their marketing or anything like that. Just the culture of “success”, where success isn’t measured by an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage, but it’s measured by having more than everybody else.
This isn’t new, this isn’t recent. It’s promoted by everybody from religious leaders to politicians to teachers…almost universally. That’s what has the greatest effect on our society. The media is peanuts compared to this force.
Mandolin, amen to THAT.
odanu gets at a good point: cutting off your kids from television may be all well and good until they become fascinated and obsessed with the glowing cyclops and start going over to friends’ houses to watch it.
We don’t do our kids any favors by releasing them into a world completely unprepared for the things that will prey on them: both literally and figuratively. If your kid sees the television as a sort of “secret lover” that mean-old mom and dad don’t approve of, they aren’t going to be able to make cynical choices when mom and dad aren’t there to shield them from marketing anymore.
I don’t think that the bullying aspect should be understated, either. Back when we were growing up, there was a fiercely “independant” tone to child-rearing–kids were encouraged to develop their own special snowflakeness. Okay, maybe I just think that because I was a Montessori kid. But in the past decade that has shifted dramatically and we seem to be promoting a very rigid hegemony (with a corporate flavor) and I think that any child seen refusing to subscribe to it is that much more of a freak in the eyes of their peers — not like being thought a freak when you’re a kid is a walk in the park to begin with.
A recent study shows that the average American kid watches something like three and a half hours of television a day. That’s a lot for anyone.
Don Roberts, professor at Stanford, had a class on media and children. One of his findings was that children who live in “high print” households–homes with newspaper and magazine subscriptions, books, and adult readers–were unaffected academicly by the amount of TV they watched. More TV /= bad grades. In low-print households, the more TV, the worse the performance.
Prof. Roberts was also an advisor to “He-Man” and some of those other cartoons–it was their job to make sure ‘educational’ messages were in the programming–which is why Tarzan, Shazam, etc. usually ended up resolving their problems without using violence.
When the FCC changed the rules about cartoons and educational programming, we lost those silly moralizing cartoons and inherited a world of fighting cartoons. It’s kinda scary to think that those lame cartoons, with their ‘don’t fight unless there is no other option’ message might have made for a less violent culture.
At any rate, all children’s programming pretty much reeks. PBS Kids is no better than the others–I actually was thrilled when we got cable again b/c I HATE those Deborah Foreman cartoons–the leads are the most obnoxious whiny children, and they ‘instruct’ kids by having their characters misbehave and then learn a lesson–which means the stars are brats. I don’t need more bratty kids in the house.
Sesame Street jumped the shark when Jim Henson died. They used to understand that appealing to parents was important (Prof. Roberts even covered that in class) because if parents like the show, they will watch it with their kids. No, the kids may not have liked watching James Taylor or Stevie Wonder music segments, but their parents did. And Henson’s jokes could go over their heads, but it kept their parents involved.
The Elmo-ification of SS is just a nightmare. Dumbed down and humorless. And now the whole program is so overly structured that they don’t have all the cute little bits anymore–just set Muppet shots.
And PBS allows commercials.
Not as bad as Nick (damn my son’s schoolmates for telling my son about SpongeBob) and not quite as genderized as Disney, but still not good.
I still like TV. It can be a great teaching tool to use with your kids. But Christmas toy marketing began a few weeks ago, and even the 3 y/o mouths slogans: “Crayola: the art of childhood” is my current favorite of hers. She says it with such sincerity–as if she cared what crayons or markerrs she used.
One immediate solution to getting kids out of the house and into the street is to publicize the fact that stranger kidnappings are vanishingly rare, and to increase comprehensive sex ed so that kids know better how to spot predators and describe if anything happens. Empowering children and parents instead of letting them cower behind their doors in fear, in other words.
We benefit in Britain from having public service television. One of the little secrets most parents here are aware of now is the CBBC and CBeebies TV stations–BBC kids TV without adverts. I can sate my little boy’s appetite for TV without the adverts turning him into a demanding monster.
And Amanda, I can point to strong specific benefits that come from me being a life-long television addict, including my entire professional writing career (I’m about to start on my second book, a volume on Battlestar Galactica), a lot of self-confidence that came from interacting with people who cared about TV, and being able to cope with being an iconoclast at a hideous huge conservative high school thanks to finding the other Trekkie girls in my grade and bonding with them. So does that make us both right, both wrong, or….what?
I enjoy quality television. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the actual TV or engaging in mass culture, which is why I concentrated on the word “excess”. But I’m not Pollyanna about it—even the good TV producers have to be able to get advertising dollars, and marketers have many mandates. Even on my favorite TV show of all time “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, the main actress clearly succumbed to the pressure to always lose weight and never consider your body good enough for TV unless it’s actually transparent. I don’t doubt that the people on that set were good folks, but the demands of the marketers are just too ingrained.
And I’m not one who thinks that Slayers have to be big and buff like Lucy Lawless; their power was supposed to be supernatural. But SMG was a tiny woman to begin with, and that was apparently not good enough.
Parental availability? Time spent in social activities? Scoio-economic status? Time spent working?
Yes, to a degree (because children who fight to be watching TV more often end up reducing time in social activies), definitely, and more than definitely. Plus they had some sophisticated measuring techniques to prove that it wasn’t that depressed kids were drawn to consumerism, but that consumerism depressed the kids. Americans on the whole suffer from a lot of anxiety, which shouldn’t be so if we’re so great a nation, but there’s so many must-haves and must-dos that people get overwhelmed.
Thanks for the story, Louise. I can feel poor Mary—I was a heavily bullied child, and back in the late 80s/early 90s, it was about how I was too bookish, wasn’t attuned to the extremely particular fashions at school, etc. I can only imagine how horrific it is for a kid now that the list of must-haves has gotten so long. I can only imagine your terror. I nearly flunked the 7th grade, I was so depressed, but if it’s any consolation, I bounced back and became an all-A student. So there’s a very solid chance she’s just at the most vulnerable age.
Good luck to you. The adult world mellows out the edges and permits us to forget the ugly reality, which is unpolished children often represent the worst of human nature.
“I felt bad for parents because it seems that there’s really only one choice when faced with the hard evidence—limit TV-watching, exposure to fast food, toy collecting and other engagements with the mass media that markets to children. Which will cause fights and could cause your child to be unpopular and the target of bullies—seems like a real dilemma in a lot of ways.”
I think it’s not just the abstract social pressure that makes this hard but the sheer time and energy that are required to keep a kid occupied and stimulated all day. Without a good child-care system available, how’s a parent supposed to take care of all that while working full time?
Amanda:Reducing the amount of homework expected for developing children would also help a lot.
jTuba:
Well, there’s the benign neglect approach. Teach the kids to not stick forks in light sockets, fire is not for playing with, and don’t run into a street when there are cars, and let them go. Every kid I know has a cell phone: if in trouble, just have them call you.
My parents pretty much let us wander around as a kid, but this was small town USA. It may be more difficult in cities, but I think that my parents telling me “go DO something. Even if it’s wrong” helped me a lot in figuring out how to occupy myself.
Oh and just to repeat a previous comment upthread: I find I have to do more research and read more books to keep abreast of most threads on this websites. Maybe you should sell yourself to local university for some sort of independent study class.
Thanks, Amanda- I’m about 10 years older than you, but had the same experiences in 70’s/80’s. My way of dealing with it and at the same time dealing with my father’s alcoholism and mother’s enabling was to get the best grades I could and spend as much time in the Maine woods with my grandparents and cousins as humanly possible. But… different world now. I will share your story with her and good wishes; she seemed settled down and hopeful today and slept well last night. More relaxed and laughed alot; played with her pets and even hugged her sister rather than tease her. I’m hopeful, too.
We have been very careful with what external influences come into our house, because of our younger daughter’s autism, and I know having a disabled sister has added pressure to Mary as well. She told me last night that she considers me one of her best friends- not something I strived for, but honored to be, as my mom and grandparents were MY best friends. Mary spoke with my mom at length last night (my parents were both terrified as well) and spoke with her best friend- some of their pals were really scared for Mary and wanted to know she was okay. THAT HELPED ALOT.
Both the professor who found her and the wife who called 911 have stopped by to check on all of us; the professor nicely but firmly told Mary how lucky she was not to have gotten hurt. As did our police chief and the officer on duty- we’re a small town of about 3000, yet within an hour of our call, the police for 2 towns, county sheriff, state police, game wardens, and dog teams were notified. She was astonished when the police chief told her that. She’s a KID- she had no idea whatsoever that so many people would be involved. And more friends and family were ready to drop everything to help as needed- thank goodness it didn’t come to that.
That’s it for today; I’m emotionally drained. My next step, as reading is her forte, is to write my daughter a very long letter. I was so afraid at 6am yesterday that I was never going to have a chance to tell her alot of things and I don’t want to let another day go by without doing so. One of a million things that runs through your head at such a time, I guess. A peaceful weekend to you all!
Some one mentioned watching tv with their kids and doing what I can now recognize as deconstruction of commercials and so forth.
I gotta tell you, I used to HATE when my mom would do that. Really, really. (partially because she wasn’t that good at it, and her analysis was often tinged with her own recovering-Catholic, anti-sex or anything fun mindset) I used to actually leave the room if I knew we were about to see something that would bring on the awful comments from her.
So, if you’re going to watch stuff with your kids, lay off a little, ok?
Also, I was never allowed to watch The Simpsons, even in high school. Which goes along with what other folks are talking about — with kids being out of the culture loop, or considered odd by their peers. There’d be class discussions that centered around an episode — invasive species for example — but I’d have NO IDEA what was being discussed.
We let our kids roam a prescribed area, and some of my son’s friends directly and indirectly challenged our foolishness because of alleged predators and sickos (and boogymen and other ficticious nonbeings not holding up to statistical scrutiny …). Before we knew it, most kids the ages of my sons were wandering to the park and within the boundaries of our neighborhood. We sent them to soccer on bikes and were roundly scolded for it, yet packs of same-age kids now roam our 1920s subdivision on bikes and on foot. We sent our kids into the woods and were anonymously threatened with DSS action, yet more kids are hiking with their dogs now. We have walked to school for a long time, and we are no longer the only ones making the 2/3 mile trudge and have had kids dropped off with us mid-route so their parents can just go to work. Some just had kids who were sick of the bus and the car and didn’t understand why they couldn’t walk too.
Sometimes I feel like the first monkey to wash the potato. Soon, other monkeys and 100 monkeys and then all the other monkeys are washing spuds, but only after seriously questioning spud washing and getting upset about spud washing and making sure we all know the alleged dangers of spud washing as evidenced by all the conventional wisdom absent scientific support.
Then again, my middle school age kid will walk or bike home from school, via the farmer’s market, library, bookstore, and organized lunch at the locally-owned soda fountain and homework time at the library on a half day.
Louise, I’m so glad your daughter is home safe!
Personal anecdote time: My parents taught me to “talk back” to advertising by subscribing me and my brother to Zillions magazone, which was Consumer Reports’ magazine for kids. It specialized in picking apart misleading commercials, showing the real toys and how they weren’t nearly as exciting as advertised.
It tapped into my desire, as a kid and a pre-teen, to have special secret knowledge about the world. Knowing when someone is lying to you or just wrong, and exactly how they’re lying or wrong, gives you a great sense of power.
I don’t even know if Zillions exists anymore. I hope so.
I got picked on all the time as a kid, but I didn’t get picked on for my lack of consumer goods.
sons’ friends parents that is …
Louise,
Best to you and the family. I hope y’all are and stay ok.
To those welcoming me back–Thanks, but I didn’t go anywhere. just commenting less; trying to work more on the dissertation.
And, one further note. It’s not television watching per se that is the problem. It’s the combination of media consumption and integration into the broader consumer culture. They tend to reinforce each other (and it’s not just advertising, but how media content itself is often both advertisement and training to be a consumer).
“Which will cause fights and could cause your child to be unpopular and the target of bullies—seems like a real dilemma in a lot of ways. Schor admits that social pressures like this make opting out hard”
The bullying and the social pressures are the main reasons why my left-leaning friends prefer to send their kids to private school. About half the children I know are going either to Friends school or Montessori.
I would add to the opt out question of TV, fast food, and overall consumer culture that where one lives has a huge impact. Where we live in northern New England at least half our friends (inclucing those with children my daughter’s age) don’t have any TV. There is no cable so you have to get satellite (same is true unfortunately for the internet). We have a good video collection, and that way there are no commercials. There is no fast food or mall nearby, we belong to and shop at a large co-op that reduces our exposure to lots of grocery store commercial toy and food products, and which means I don’t have to be driven mad by bad canned music. We belong to a CSA (community supported agricuture) where we can attend lots of fun farm related events and see friends from all over the area. The mountains and valleys mean cell phones don’t work that well which makes me happy. And kids in our and nearby towns swim in the ponds and the river in the summer, and the public school ski proograms in towns throughout the region mean that many kids are skiing in the winter. (This is not a wealthy school district by any stretch of the imagination, it just has a lot of volunteers.) My daughter sleds every possible day at school in winter and skis on several as well. They even take the kids hiking from the elementary school.
I am not saying that this is the answer for everyone or that this is a perfect little sanctuary, but the reality is that in this community many people have effectively opted out together. This is possible because people from very different socio-economic backgrounds share a value in the community and this physical environment. Kids and adults are outdoors and active a lot, by choice or by profession, and we engage in community events with people both like and very unlike our family.
It is all much easier when they are little and you can control their world to a much greater extent. Many here are talking about the sane ways they are dealing with these pressures, but you can’t lock them up forever and there is very great danger in doing so.
While my son’s middle school works very hard to create an appropriate environment where many problems simply don’t happen, where all the costly toys are not allowed, etc., no space can ever be perfect or perfectly safe. As Louise’s sad but fortunately resolved story attests, it gets far harder as they get older.
I have seen totally sheltered kids go bananas with sudden freedom or get eaten alive by a world that they don’t understand enough to actively resist (rather than passively hide from). I have also seen totally unsheltered kids and their controlled minds and uncontrolled impulses and disneyfied souls. It is all to easy, when they are little, to think you have it all down and are doing the right things, and that right/righteousness can be seductive.
I would say to those parents here and elsewhere, do keep your mind on the future as well as the now. Building media literacy will go a long way in the future, even if it means letting your kids watch TV and having to watch it yourself so you can ask critical questions and help point out the advertidiocy.
(and it’s not just advertising, but how media content itself is often both advertisement and training to be a consumer)
Why am I thinking Wim Wenders movie here - Alice in the Cities, the part where the journalist is touring the US and kills the TV?
Louise,
i feel your comments need a whole thread of support. I just wanted to tell you that a dear friend of mine is going through some tough stuff with her tenth grader following on tough anorexia in seventh grade. These are incredibly difficult years for kids in this society with such high expectations and such a murky relationship between what they do every day (school, grades, music class, consume, throw out) and the risky future they see ahead of them (what work will my english grade enititle me to? how will my parents pay for college? what happens if I drop out?).
I also want to recommend “Consuming Kids” a book written by another local author (hey MAJeff! I wish I could figure out a way to contact you in real life since I’m near you and feel you should be adopted and fed) I think her name is Susan Lind. Its contains great research on particular marketing trends to children and their impact.
We recently got rid of a lot of stuff in order to renovate our house, didn’t miss it for a year, and then moved back into our house and stuff seems to just fly through the window. Halloween was one example. The problem with US patterns of consumption is that small and valueless things are used to mark significant moments, social interactions, family life and then you can’t get rid of them and they just kind of pile up and produce clutter (mental and physical.) I think its a good experience to tot up, for example, all the toys and rubber goodies that are handed out at Halloween and ask yourself how much more fun you and your neighbors would have had if, instead of buying all that stuff, you had all gotten together to build one haunted house, or to ice one tray of halloween cookies. If, in short, you had substituted one huge and complex social interaction for a horde of small disposable plastic toys? We are letting plastic and goods substitute for social interactions, just as we let TV watching substitute for creating our own entertainment. Which reminds me of a wonderful expression I heard once: entertainment is what you buy, fun is what you do.
aimai
Louise, glad she’s home safe.
One more brick in the wall between my second-grader and middle school. If I don’t have time to start the Montessori outdoor-ed charter school she needs, we’re homeschooling 6th through 9th.
We’re also part of an opted-out community, at Montessori school and the training stables there are plenty of peers for my kid. I think it’s interesting what percentage of my sister GenX moms are in the same spot WRT opting our kids out of consumerism, since we were the first kids to be Sesame Streeted in early childhood. The older moms, and by that I mean the woman I married and her age peers who were not exposed to self-styled ‘educational television’ because there was no such thing, seem less concerned.
I’d love to know why. Not so curious that I’m pursuing a PhD in the area, but if someone is, spill.
jTuba: I think it’s not just the abstract social pressure that makes this hard but the sheer time and energy that are required to keep a kid occupied and stimulated all day.
Anecdata from someone who hated TV as a kid and only watches DVDs of TV series today because she enjoys fandom: School-age kids can keep themselves busy very well if they have friends and space, as my mother used to complain when she had to physically drag me to dinner nearly every evening because I was too busy with whatever I was doing, and had to threaten me with house arrest to keep me from sneaking away during “a nice family evening watching TV”.
I feel that shrinking space and overorganisation keep kids from being occupied and stimulated on their own. However, it’s easy to allow your kids space if everybody is doing it. If you get dark looks for having and elven-year old bicycle a mile to soccer training, it’s a lot harder.
From personal experience, parental limitation of television-watching is an entirely positive thing, although of course I railed against it when I was a kid. It turned me into a voracious reader, which has had all kinds of very important positive effects on my life.
If/when/if I have kids, I will do exactly the same: strict limitations on television watching, like, maybe two hours a week tops. But unlimited access to books, books, and more books!
Another thing my parents did that I think was hugely consequential to my and my sister’s development was the active encouragement from an early age to explore creativity in all its forms. Drawing, painting, collage-making, knitting, sewing, music, the list goes on. Also active outdoorsy things; we lived near a very large park and were in a constant kid-pack roaming the place. I think about it now, and I don’t know if parents today would feel comfortable letting their kids roam around unattended in a huge park all day until dusk!
Anyway, looking back on it, I think my parents did a great job of insulating us from the pernicious effects of television and mass-consumption mania. And of course, we were geeky outcasts with none of the right clothes or toys. Once again, at the time I hated it, but now I wear my geek scars with pride and wouldn’t change a single thing.
rowmyboat, are you one of my sisters or something. Because I’d swear we had the same mom.
I was never allowed to watch the Simpsons either. It started on Fox when I was in the sixth or seventh grade and all my friends (and most of their parents) watched it religiously. But because my mom thought Bart was a bratty kid, she wouldn’t have it on in her house (still won’t) and I was never allowed to watch. I used to get made fun of constantly because of that and some of her other oddities, which included the lectur-y comments whenever something even remotely sexual came up in some other show or in a conversation. It was highly embarrassing.
Oddly enough, though, she absolutely loved Married With Children and we were allowed to watch that whenever we wanted. I don’t understand her rationale for that one at all, because MWC was loads worse than the Simpsons ever dreamed of being.
I tend to restrict my kids’ tv watching, but they do get to watch more than I’d strictly like. Mostly they watch PBS in the mornings while we’re getting ready for work and on the weekend mornings so the husband and I can sleep for an extra hour or so. And they get to watch DVDs from the library. I try to keep it as much as possible in the educational realm of shows (except for Scooby Doo–we have the 1st and 2nd seasons of that on disk, the kids love it, and I love the old school ones myself). But, they don’t whine when I tell them that tv time is over and they are usually content to entertain themselves (mostly by fighting and driving me crazy).
(disclaimer: i did not read every single previous comment, so if this point has been made, please accept it as offered with good intentions).
First parents determine what kids eat, and it is imperative that they be provided the healthiest, most nutritious resources available. Teaching them to eat well and they will do so for their own children.
Second, there is an alternative compromise for television, that i used for years with my children, and passed along to my grandchildren. I watched TV with them, and became a loud and vocal critic of all forms of commercialization and consumptive manipulation. I made TV watching something unpleasant for them until they learned to actively and aggressive engage the medium and its powerful but dangerous messages. As a few have pointed above, modern (and post-modern) broadcast media offer a full spectrum of material, some mind-blowingly enriching and some hideous and vile. Teaching children to evaluate and analyze carries over to their peers as well, so that when they are away from home, visiting with families that do not share the same values, your children still think for themselves. My youngest son has grown into a fine young actor, but more so, a masterful critic of the acting he experiences when watching visual media (even to the quality of the performances of commercial/advertising actors). He shares that all the time, which is okay, except when i just want to watch TV. Damn it all comes back to haunt you.
Another great reason not to have rugrats.
I don’t have money to buy stuff. I do tend to think I need stuff like an mp3 player, computer, soundsystem, sony ereader, that sort of thing. I judge whether I’m being stupid by whether I *use* it or not. It’s the whole ethos of disposability that really gets people, since it’s so understated within all the consumerism.
Big word to this. I LOVE my iPod–it lets me listen to music wherever I want, making for much more pleasant train rides, plane rides, and runs. I don’t feel the need to get a new video iPod until my iPod stops working (which, as much as I do love mine, they are not known for their long lifespans), but I know people who got a new video iPod… just because. I’m equally puzzled by just about anyone who bought an iPhone opening day: didn’t you have a phone already? Didn’t your phone work well enough? Sure, get an iPhone when you need a new phone, but… you don’t need a new phone now.
My big consumer-guilt thing is that I buy way too many books. One of these days I need to go acquaint myself with the public libraries near me.
Shorter: If you want grownup TV, keep the kids playing outside where they belong!
Maybe in super-safe suburbs, or if you have the time to go with them to a nearby park. But in big cities? I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting my kids play outside in most parts of NYC.
Amanda:Reducing the amount of homework expected for developing children would also help a lot.
Word to this too! Some of the kids I work with have the stupidest homework, homework that is clearly not helping them learn anything. Never mind the fact that the kids who can benefit most from doing work outside of class are often the ones who don’t have someone at home who can help them with homework.
Seems this is all part of a growing revolution (if you will) against corporate profits at the expense of the health of our children. I, for one, am thrilled.