About six years ago, I attended a local mother’s group lecture about media violence and its impact on kids. The speaker was Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University (and, in an interesting side note, Matt Damon’s mom). She didn’t talk about her famous son; she talked about the worrisome pervasiveness of fighting and weapons in kids’ entertainment. As she talked about the need to steer our children toward peaceful images and messages, I nodded along with the rest of the parents in the audience. It made perfect sense, and I vowed, at least that night, to be more careful about what my boys, then two in number and still in the tot stage, watched.
Fast forward to this moment: My third son, nearly 4, is a few feet away, waging an imaginary war with Deceptions. This is something he does for a disturbingly large portion of his waking hours. A healthy interest in trucks and trains and furry animals has given way to a fascination for robots, and not just any robots—huge, weaponized ones with names like Megatron, Demolisher, and Snarl. And how can I blame him? I let him watch Rescue Bots for his before-dinner show. I indulge his interest by printing out images of the metal beasts and pasting them into a “Transformers” book we created together. Hell, one rainy day last week, I played Ratchet to his Shockwave in a game of indoor tag, gruff, angry voice and all.
Even as this interest made me a little uneasy, I pushed worries away, assured by the fact that almost every boy I know is into some show or game involving some sort of weaponry, be it a ninja sword or “ice breath” or metal fists. Isn’t that just what boys are into? When my oldest son was a toddler and I wondered aloud about toy guns, a veteran mom friend assured me that if I withheld them, “they’ll just make one out of sticks anyway.”
(Then there’s this honest fact: When he watches or plays with Transformers, my youngest son is busy. And happy. And for a busy mom of three, that’s worth its wait in gold.)
But something last weekend brought me back to that moms’ group lecture. My mother-in-law, a longtime teacher and world-class mom and grandma, was visiting. After gamely reading Buddy Brawl aloud to my son for about the 13th time in an afternoon, she looked at his pile of Transformers’ books and mused lightly, “I wonder how storylines like these change a child’s worldview?” It wasn’t a judgment, but an honest question; and, as I thought about it over the course of the next day or two, an excellent one.
I did a little research, and discovered that the effect of violent programming, even seemingly innocuous cartoons involving fighting, has a negative impact, on boys, particularly. An especially persuasive 2007 University of Washington study in the journal Pediatrics found that for every hour a day spent watching violent TV as a preschooler (I’m talking Power Rangers-level stuff, here), boys were three times more likely to exhibit behavior problems at age 7. And in studies performed at Princeton, researchers discovered that kids who watched a heavy amount of fantasy violence had lower-level moral reasoning skills than their peers.
So, I’m embarking on an experiment: To remove from the DVR, iPad, and desktop “favorites” bar any show or game involving fighting or weapons, for a month. While the impact of books is less clear, for the sake of continuity, I’m tucking away the Transformers, Star Wars, and Superhero books for a time as well. (I won’t worry about stuff they do at friend’s houses…who wants to be “that mom?” And anyway, my goal is to reduce exposure, not eradicate it, which would be impractical.) When the same University of Washington researchers, above, prescribed to preschoolers a similar “media diet” of prosocial programming only, their behavior noticeably improved. I’m curious to see whether it cuts down on the kids’s level of play fighting and real fighting—which, while not overtly aggressive or dangerous, has been picking up lately. If the kids balk, I’ll explain it isn’t a punishment, but an effort to explore some new shows they might love. To my older sons, I’ll also speak honestly about my concerns about the impact on-screen fighting has had on their baby brother (whose pugnacious style of play, apparent with his brothers if not his peers quite yet, can often be as annoying to them as it is concerning to me.)
It won’t be easy: The older boys will have to forego their favorite iPad app (involving warring clans) and the little guy is bound to have some Autobot withdrawal. I’m going to have to log some serious time reconfiguring TV and computer settings. But if they pick up just a few more positive media options (and possibly brain cells) along the way, I figure it will have been worth it. In the next week or so, I will report back about the non-violent, boy-friendly shows and apps that have gotten the household thumbs-up.
I’m not expecting miracles, here. Just a little more peace in programming (and, hopefully, the playroom). Wish me luck.
Photo credit: The Team via Photo Pin, cc
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