Friday, November 19, 1999 MEDIA & SOCIETY KIDS & THE MEDIA: Media-Saturated Kids Need Parental Involvement       American children are living in "bedrooms that are fully equipped media centers, spending hours watching television and listening to music by themselves with little parental supervision and almost no rules," according to a study released yesterday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The study, Kids & Media @ the New Millennium, found that on average, children spend five hours and 29 minutes every day, seven days a week, with media for recreation. Media consumption for children over the age of eight is higher, at six hours and 43 minutes (Edwards, Washington Post, 11/18). Children's medium of choice is television, which they watch an average of two hours and 46 minutes a day. Following television, children indulge in listening to music, reading for fun, watching videos, using a computer for fun and playing video games (Chonin, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/18). Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman said of the study, "The question is how these kids will relate to nature and to real human relationships. What happens when they drive to a mountaintop and take in a spectacular view: Will they get it, or will it not move fast enough for them?" (Haddock, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, 11/18). Vicky Rideout, director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's program on entertainment media and public health and a study co-author, pointed to the "increasingly isolated activity" that media consumption has become for children. Although 58% of respondents said the TV is usually on during meals and 42% said the TV is on in their homes "most of the time," 49% said there are no household rules about watching TV. Additionally, 53% have televisions in their bedrooms. About 95% of older children watch television without their parents, while 81% of children ages 2-7 watch unsupervised (Edwards, Washington Post, 11/18). Donald Roberts, a communications professor at Stanford University and a study co-author, said, "We're literally turning bedrooms into media centers. We have turned media into a socialization agent as important as schools and as important as churches" (Deardorff, Chicago Tribune, 11/18). Rideout recommended that parents get televisions and computers out of their children's bedrooms and limit the time their children can use them (MacPherson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/18). The survey also indicated that minority children spend more time with media every day. African-American children consume three hours and 56 minutes of television each day, while Hispanic children watch three hours and 13 minutes, and white children spend two hours and 22 minutes each day watching TV. What Now?       University of Texas-Austin researcher Ellen Wartella called the study's findings "momentous," saying, "Media are implicated in the course of childhood as never before. ... We've always looked at church, school and home [as primary influences of children]. Now we have to add media." Roberts said, "Most parents will be dumbfounded by this. Most parents will say, 'Not my child.' And most parents will be wrong" (Edwards, Washington Post, 11/18). During a panel discussion yesterday, Federal Communications Commission Chair William Kennard, actor Malcom-Jamal Warner, rap artist Chuck D, CEOs Tom Freston of the MTV Network and Jamie Kellner of the WB Network, movie director Joel Schumacher and researchers of media and children assessed the study's findings (Chicago Tribune, 11/18). Kellner said that television programmers must "put on the real world and show the consequences, show the options." The Post reports that WB's programming "frequently features sexual situations involving teens and young adults." Kellner added that today's teens are "very sophisticated" and "if television doesn't depict the real world, they will simply turn it off" (Washington Post, 11/18). Chuck D said, "We've gone from regulation parenting to (needing) navigation. Thirty years ago you had people programming children. Now you have to deprogram them before you can teach them anything and help them navigate. Their minds are being assaulted. We have to teach (children) how to swim and duck the sharks" (Chicago Tribune, 11/18). Many others echoed his sentiments, calling for action in light of the study's results. Kennard said that the study proves "we've got to find new ways to protect our children in this environment," including the little-used V-chip that lets parents block out objectionable TV material. Elizabeth Thorman, founder and president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Media Literacy, said, "Media is not like a disease you can inoculate against. That's an obsession of the United States. Instead of looking at the issue qualitatively, we get caught up in whether it has a good or bad effect. ... We have to learn to see how media is shades of gray ... and look at how education is the solution" (Jensen, Los Angeles Times, 11/18). But Teen People managing editor Christina Ferrari said the study did not show "how media is affecting kids and teenagers, how it's changing their lives, how they're adapting and how we can teach them to be more savvy consumers." She pointed to a comment by Warner, who said, "The media's here, it's not going to go away, so what are we going to do about it?" as an important observation (Chonin, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/18). MTV's Take       Betsy Frank, executive vice president of research for MTV networks, said MTV has been tracking similar data and was not surprised by the Kaiser study or MTV's own findings. She said, "We know how much time kids spend with the media choices they have." The MTV study found one striking difference -- 70% of children ages 4-11 reported that a parent watched TV with them and 53% of teenagers 12-18 reported the same. She warned, however, that "you can't understand the kid just by understanding his or her media usage. ... Kids are exposed to a lot of media; nobody is going to deny that. That said, kids are exposed to a lot of things in their lives, and everything we've seen says that the kids are growing up just fine" (Jensen, Los Angeles Times, 11/18). 'Cheap Babysitter' Media "provide parents with relief," columnist Donna Britt notes in today's Washington Post. She asserts that, "Kids ... are walking, talking need machines, requiring our endless protection, support, advice, money and most frightening, time. For moms and dads balancing jobs, relationships, finances and more, even a beloved child can be a noisy and demanding drain on one's already-strained resources." Thus, televisions, electronic games and computers serve as "cheap babysitters -- legal opiates that, briefly or for hours at a time, give parents a much-needed break." However understandable that is, Britt decries the study's finding that few parents exert any control over what their children watch and are not present "to filter, interpret or react to what children consume." But when parents are present, they can impart values, "whether they're responding to something that's said on a talk show or an allusion to sex on a sitcom." Britt further bemoans the lack of parental involvement by noting another study finding that children who consume the most media tend to be the least happy. She theorizes, "Less-contented kids may be more likely to take refuge in the media, to gorge themselves on make-believe worlds filled with more danger and mayhem -- and more wealth, fancy baubles and freedom without consequence -- than their actual lives could contain." But their "overwhelmed parents hand them over to such images without a thought. That should terrify us all," she concludes (Britt, Washington Post, 11/19). America's "celebrity-obsessed, consumerist culture has put televisions everywhere," an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial argues. Further, "parents can be blamed for allowing television to dominate American family life," the editorial asserts. Suggesting that parents "set an example," the Journal-Constitution wonders what it would be like "if children redirected half" the time they now spent watching TV to "reading or playing outside. They'd be smarter and fitter, an important consideration in light of last week's news that Americans are growing dangerously overweight" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/19). Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report