Gloria DeGaetano - Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We?

Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We? (cont.)

4. Lack of relevant information and a pattern of disinformation keep parents in a state of confusion.
Corporationsspend millions each day to guide our attention in specific directions – often leaving out critical information important to parents.

For example, most parents I meet are unaware that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends one-two hours a day of all screen time (including TV, video games, videos and computers) for children ages 3 and older (http://www.aap.org/publiced/BR_TV.htm) and no screen time for babies and toddlers, birth to age 2. In fact, some experts think the AAP’s recommendation is not strong enough. Researchers Dr. Robert Hill and Dr. Eduardo Castro, writing in Getting Rid of Ritalin: How Neurofeedback Can Successfully Treat Attention Deficit Disorder without Drugs recommend no television before the age of five. They emphasize, “We can say with confidence that excessive television, particularly in young children, causes neurological damage. TV watching causes the brain to slow down, producing a constant pattern of low-frequency brainwaves consistent with ADD behavior.” (2)

5. A screen-machine culture turns mass attention to sensational and mindless content, while downplaying and often deriding analysis and other higher-level thought processes.
A mechanism inside the lower part of the human brain actually causes us to look at the distorted or the weird. That means it’s easier to pay attention to gratuitous violence, titillating sexuality and fast-paced action than it is to PBS, the History Channel, or the teacher in the classroom. When sensational forms of images predominate, selective attention processes – that is the brain’s ability to filter out extraneous information and determine what is really important –do not develop easily.

6. A screen-machine culture pushes a “machine-like” view of the world, treats people as objects and promotes a “quick fix” as the only way.
Sitcom characters solve dilemmas in less than 30 minutes. Commercials imply an end to malaise by purchasing a new car or the demise of depression with a new color of lipstick. Drug companies visually portray people having more joy in life with the intake of a pill. Constant images of quick fixes can influence our thinking about what works best for kids. For example, variances in growth are common in all living things. The surrounding culture, though, pushes parents to panic, worry and seek quick fixes if their children don’t learn to read or write or count at the “right” time.

Aligning Our Priorities with Our Parental Decisions

Unfortunately, these challenges will be with us as long as we live in a mass media culture. But, on the positive side, once we name and understand these challenges, we can move in the direction of addressing them proactively. As parents we have lots of power to directly influence our children. In doing so, we indirectly change the society we live in. Thinking children will make wiser choices. Creative kids will improve upon the current system when their turn comes. So all is not loss—if we rise to the challenge to parent well in a media age.

But where to start? The problem can seem overwhelming.

Perhaps the very first step (and the biggest challenge?) is for us to realize that we are more influential than mass media—that parental daily decisions powerfully impact children and will determine what kind of adults they will become. When we compassionately nudge ourselves out of complacency, standing clear in our values and our priorities, our children benefit greatly.

It’s not easy to parent well in a media age. But nothing less is going to get the job done. The only way out of the global, screen-machine saturation and the colonization of our children’s minds is for us moms and dads to clearly convey to our children what we stand for. And then align each parenting decision with those beliefs. When that happens, we will begin to reverse those six challenges described above. We will move into new territory of using all forms of screen technology wisely, purposefully and to our benefits—no longer worried about screen technology’s negative impact on our children. We will usher in a new world because we had the courage to change the old one.

References

1. Parenting Well in a Media Age: Keeping Our Kids Human, Gloria DeGaetano, Personhood Press, 2005.

2. Ibid., p. 8.

3. Ibid.

4. Getting Rid of Ritalin: How Neurofeedback Can Successfully Treat Attention Deficit Disorder without Drugs, Robert Hill, M.D. and Eduardo Castro, M. D., Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2002, p. 36.

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