Teach Kids to Use a Critical Eye

Claudia Puig’s article “Two Coasts, Many Views on Television’s Influence” (Calendar, June 11) once again reveals the misdirected views of those industry, religious and political leaders concerned about the role of television in the lives of children.

The article describes a recent panel on the influence of TV on kids sponsored by Women of Washington Inc., featuring Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti and Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, who, among other things, got into a mild tiff about the moral merits of “NYPD Blue” versus “Dragnet.”

It’s interesting that whenever politicians and religious and industry leaders hold a big meeting about the effects of television on kids, no matter how well intentioned, they end up complaining about the guns and nudity on “NYPD Blue” and just how darn awful it is that kids’ minds are being corrupted by them.

But they never seem to focus on the commercial sponsorship that helped get the guns and nudity on the program in the first place. Their mantra-like solution to the problem of violence and sex on television is almost always: Hollywood, clean up your act!

But blaming Hollywood overlooks how kids really experience television in a television-dominated, media-saturated culture. Gratuitous sex and graphic violence on television, while something we must be concerned about, are only a few frames of the television-watching picture.

What is often conspicuously absent from these morality summits on television is discussion about kids’ constant exposure to television commercials.

More than things we fast-forward through on the VCR, commercials wield considerable influence upon kids. It’s not that one TV commercial will send them scampering off to the mall. It’s that all commercials tell kids the same thing over and over: “Just buy it.”

An average kid today will see around 20,000 television commercials in one year. Considering that every single one of those commercials is replete with values (“like a rock”) and messages (“just do it”) and myths (beer commercials) couched in the directive “buy something,” there’s a heckuva lot of consumer training going on in front of the TV.

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Any parents taking their child to the local toy store will experience the effect of this training firsthand. Most kids’ cartoon shows are really commercials. In 1985, the percentage of top 10 best-selling toys tied to television shows was 100%. If television is teaching kids anything, it’s telling them that life is one big shopping spree.

The average light beer ad campaign probably has more influence over kids than “NYPD Blue.” But concerned politicians like Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who co-sponsored the V-chip legislation to help control kids’ viewing choices, don’t talk about putting a C-chip in your TV to block commercials.

Yet to really talk about the influence of television on kids means to consider the full picture, including the fact that television is a commercial business whose primary purpose is to produce programming that delivers viewers to advertisers, not the other way around. Focusing on just violence or sex and pointing a finger at Hollywood doesn’t help children make sense of the thousands of images they see every day on the tube.

Considering the tremendous influence of television in kids’ lives, it’s time to ask better questions. What is it really like for kids to grow up in a media age? How can schools and churches help parents help their kids get the most educational and entertainment value out of watching television?

Most important, what do kids themselves think about television? How do scenes of violence or sex and the constant barrage of commercials affect their lives? What do they think of the news media that almost always present them as victims of crime, criminals or dead?

Helping kids become critical viewers of television is the best way to help them take control of their television watching, including their exposure to images of violence and nudity. Critical viewers are critical thinkers, aware and inquisitive. Don’t we want our kids to be aware and inquisitive when it comes to watching TV? You bet.

As talk of television’s influence on kids and the call for more educational programming grabs the headlines during this year’s presidential election, political, religious and industry leaders would do better to focus their energy on helping kids get the media literacy education they need to become the critical viewers of television we want them to be.

Jay Dover is the program director of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles. The center is the national support organization for media literacy in the United States. Its e-mail address is: cml@earthlink.net