fbpx

Need peaceful screen time negotiations?

Get your FREE GKIS Connected Family Screen Agreement

blog21_familytv-768x512

Parents often tell me that they struggle to regulate their children’s screen media use because it’s simply overwhelming. Research and regulations regarding children and television viewing have been firmly in place for many years. It makes sense that this well-traveled path is a good place to start with parenting in the digital age. Once you tackle and implement TV-watching rules, you have developed critical skills necessary to effectively tackle other screen media. Today’s article is designed to help you build mastery and confidence in actively parenting your family’s TV-viewing choices.

How often does your child watch television? If you answered that question with any response other than “never,” you must consider TV as your co-parent. Does that make you shiver? Well it should considering the proliferation of sex, violence, and just plain meanness that is included in even children’s television programming. The truth is, if your child is watching TV (or any screen media for that matter), then they are being affected and parented by what they are watching. The following research findings provide the pros and cons of child TV watching and will help you in your quest to becoming an even more awesome parent.

  • Parent guidance is necessary to lead kids to the best choices of TV programs.

Children’s programming is designed to attract viewers rather than provide education. As a result, broadcasters guided by profit aren’t great co-parents.

It doesn’t take long flipping through channels to recognize the amount of inappropriate programming available on even daytime TV. Programming channel availability on your television is a great first step to awesome parenting, followed by co-viewing and active guidance. Our family happens to have a kid TV as well as an adult TV. My husband and I deliberately selected the channels (and games) available on the kid TV for quality academic and prosocial content. The kids are only allowed access to the adult TV with permission or for family co-viewing.

Kids learn more when they are interested in the theme of the program and tend to prefer programs with social-emotional themes over programs with academic focus (Calvert, 289). When you are making parenting decisions about channel availability, I suggest you seek your children’s opinions and actively negotiate to reach a happy and productive outcome. And as always, this is a living agreement. In other words, you will need to revisit and renegotiate as your children get older and gain a larger variety of abilities and interests.

  • Regulation has made a difference in availability and quality of children’s television.

In 1990 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted the Children’s Television Act (CTA). CTA was designed to give parents better information, more clearly define core educational programming, and increase the amount of children’s television programming. Since CTA was implemented, access to quality children’s television programming in the US has improved with genuinely positive result (Calvert, 324). This regulation was developed due to a grass roots movement by concerned parents like us! This is a hopeful precedent considering the work we still need to do as the Internet continues to encroach unregulated into our children’s lives.

  • Children as young as a year old can learn to avoid dangerous things from simply watching actors on TV.

In a 2003 study by Mumme and Fernald, 32 12-month olds were recruited from a middle-class, predominantly white community. Four objects that they’d never played with before (a letter holder, a ball with weird bumps, a garden hose adapter, and a plastic valve) were shown on a TV screen along with an actor emotionally responding to those objects (neutral, happy, or fearful) with a simple verbal description (“look at it”). The infants’ parents sat next to them reading a magazine. When later given the objects to play with, it was discovered that the infants avoided the objects to which the actor responded fearfully. They approached the neutral and positive objects the same. Surprisingly, 10-month olds were not affected by what they’d seen on TV. Just two months of development seems to make a huge difference.

Even if your children are passively viewing adult TV shows, they are being affected by the show’s emotional content. Just because your child is young or viewing alongside a parent, doesn’t mean they’re not being negatively affected by inappropriate content.

  • Preschool children who watch educational TV are often better prepared for school (Wright, 1347) and even better students in high school (Anderson).

It’s not necessary to cut out TV completely to be an awesome parent. In fact, there are some great programs out there that will benefit your children’s overall academic success!

  • Children who watch prosocial TV programs demonstrate more kindness towards peers and animals.

 Not only will quality television make your kids more successful at school, but also with others!

  • When you’re making TV program selections, remember that age makes a difference in child choice of TV programs and the ability to understand complex plots.

Younger children choose and watch more educational and informational television programs whereas older children prefer entertainment programming. Because broadcasters know this, there is less educational content targeted at older kids. In regard to quality of viewing, older children learn more from all types of programming (Calvert, 318). As cognitive abilities develop, kids are increasingly able to identify factors relevant to the central plot, recognize order as the story scheme, draw inferences about the feelings and motivations of the characters, and recognize cause-effect relationships within the program.

Just as you stock your child’s reading shelf with kid’s books rather than adult novels, it’s important to shelf age-appropriate TV programs. Websites like https://www.commonsensemedia.org can be helpful when evaluating program content.

  • When parents discuss and support the lessons kids learned from TV viewing, kids are more likely to apply lessons in real life.

In regard to the kinds of lessons kids learn from TV, kids most often report learning social-emotional lessons, then information, physical well-being, and cognitive skills lessons (Calvert, 303).

Although our kids have a kid TV at their disposal, we still regulate viewing time and choice. The babies particularly clamor for “movie night,” because it’s their favorite thing to share a series or TV with us co-viewing. My husband and I like to reinforce the academic and social lessons weaved within what we’ve watched in later discussions. Not only is it a gift to provide enriching programming to your child, but it is particularly valuable to share your thoughts, values, and zany humor with them during family quality time. Our movie nights and later discussions help us really get to know our kids. When we see the kids amped up about certain themes and topics, we often head to the bookstore or library for books that they’ll be more likely to read. Win-win!

At this moment I’m flying to South Carolina with my 20 year-old to move her in for the fall semester. Believe me as I sit here with tears in my eyes marveling at the woman she has become, it’s important to soak in every precious parenting opportunity while you can. Some day sooner than you’d like, they’ll be spreading their wings in pursuit of their own wide open spaces.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Works Cited

Anderson, D.R., Huston, A.C., Schmitt, K.L., Linebarger, D.L. , and Wright, J.C. “Early childhood television viewing and adolescent behavior”. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 66 (2001) (1, Serial No. 264). Web.

Calvert, Sandra L., and Jennifer A. Kotler. “Lessons from Children’s Television: The Impact of the Children’s Television Act on Children’s Learning.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 24.3 (2003): 275-335. Web.

Mumme, Donna L., and Anne Fernald. “The Infant as Onlooker: Learning From Emotional Reactions Observed in a Television Scenario.” Child Development 74.1 (2003): 221-37. Web.

Wright, J.C., Huston, A.C., Murphy, K.C., St. Peters, M., Pinon, M. Scantlin, R.M., and Kotler, J.A. “The relations of early television viewing to school readiness and vocabulary of children from low-income families: The early window project.” Child Development 72 (5) (2001): 1347–1366. Web.

CLICK HERE for some fun kids TV ideas!

Opt In Image
Get your free report

Don't worry, we will never spam you.

Dr. Tracy Bennett
Dr. Tracy Bennett
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn