Just say no to commerical TV!
If I could change any one thing, I would…
Keep corporate entertainment away from my kids.
I’ve really had it with the corporate media’s entertainment bread and circuses. My kids are unplugged for the most part and I hope to keep it that way. Today they’re fun-loving, confident children; why should I watch as their self-worth is destroyed by their worrying over how thin they are, or how thick their lips are, or other meaningless trivialities? The sexualization of young girls in the media is truly frightening for anyone with children. It can lead to all kinds of psychological disorders, according to the APA. But honestly, we don’t need a press release to understand these things.
I want my children to take pride in their capabilities. I want them to be mindful about things that matter, about how kind they are, about how they should treat their friends. These values are mostly absent from anything that pops out of the tube or sits on the magazine rack at the checkout counter. They’re certainly missing from commercial entertainment.
Spend an hour with corporate entertainment and the one thing that you walk away with is the cheapness of everything. It’s everywhere, in the snide, snappy, mean-spirited digs in commercials or sitcoms; in many movies, which have “gun tracks” instead of music tracks - how many murders can one person watch in two hours? This cheapness leaves the impression that “nothing really matters”. But things DO matter. There really are implications to our actions. When you live in a commercial-infused TV reality, it’s very easy to lose sight of this.
Corporate advertisers know exactly what they’re doing; they go after our kids, exploiting young minds who’ve yet to develop the skills to understand that advertising is not “the truth” but rather a manipulation. Advertisers recognize this phenomenon and even boast about doing it. When you manipulate minors for your own benefit and at their expense, well, that’s called molestation under any other situation and I think that’s what commercial TV is doing to kids. We have laws in the US against this kind of thing; why should it be OK when it comes in the form of cartoony characters?
We have drug-free school zones; how about commercial-free school zones too?
I’m all for free speech - passionately - but this is not a free speech issue. I know there are plenty of “small government” folks who don’t agree with regulations, and besides it’s hard to imagine the kinds of laws that exist in other countries being passed here in the US to control advertising to children. But we can do the next best thing by turning our backs on the thing. If you have kids you should take pride in keeping commercial TV away from them.
Maybe if more people understood the danger to kids from TV they would simply turn it off. Imagine if 25 million - 50 million - just millions and millions of Americans unplugged themselves from corporate entertainment as a protest. What a message that would send!
Here’s a social experiment to try. There are few things more frightening - enlightening? - than NOT watching commercial entertainment for a set period, say three months, and then taking a peek. You’ll be amazed, believe me. I’ve done it.
What do you think? Leave a comment!
If you’re interested in this topic here are a few resources to browse:
- Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood
- New American Dream (their page on Kids and Commercialism is outstanding)
- Commercial Alert has a Parents’ Bill of Rights petition to send Congress
Related posts
Tags: advertising, corporations, propaganda, TV
February 26, 2008 | Filed Under Blog, Living Now | Permalink
5 comments
[...] Eric wrote a fantastic post today on “Just say no to commerical TV!”Here’s ONLY a quick extract… [...]
Hi there,
Thanks for posting this. I’m a book editor, and as such very concerned about fellow arbiters of media culture and the (often very negative) ideas they force on young children.
My company (Overlook) is publishing a book this spring called THE LOLITA EFFECT: THE MEDIA SEXUALIZATION OF YOUNG GIRLS AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. It’s about this very topic. I hope you’ll check it out at your local bookstore/library–I believe very strongly in the topic and hope this book will inspire other concerned adults.
Hi Juliet,
Thanks for your comment! I’ll certainly keep an eye for that book - it’s such an important topic and I’m glad to know that there’ll be another resource to bring attention to it; your offering some “defensive arts” sounds terrific too. Badly needed.
I for one hope to use this blog as a way to get more people - both parents and non - to seriously consider “shutting them out” - just turning our backs - in a mass way - on the commercial entertainment/advertising madness. Imagine if 10 million, 20 million, 50 million sets just WENT OFF one day! What a message…
So as they say, “watch this space.”
When the book is out I’d be happy to run a review, something I plan to incorporate as a regular feature. So keep in touch.
Good luck!
I’m seeing a trend towards more and more of my peers not owning TVs, or at least not bothering with cable. I haven’t had a TV for the last year and I’ve enjoyed not being bombarded with advertising. There’s more than enough good sources for info, news and commentary on the Web.
The only time it really hurts not having a telly is during hockey playoffs!
Well said and I totally agree…In my case it’s a fanatical baseball addiction that keeps me from smashing the thing. That and all the glass that’d go flying. I have kids, you see.
In truth I once caught myself daydreaming as a DVR-recorded game ended and I found myself face-to-face with a TV-haters worse nightmare: An ad for a “sexual performance enhancement” drug. There are few things that can make you feel like the world as you know it has come to end more than one of those can. I really did have to hold back the effort to let a karate kick loose into the Panasonic for that one…
Thanks for the comment Julie!
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