So, maybe you are a parent who is all over the supervision thing with your teen. You know their friends and their friend's parents. You keep tabs on where your child spends their time and with whom.
However, have you thought about the other people that your teen may be "spending time with" and being heavily influenced by. The musical artists, actors, models, authors, celebrities, and magazine editors. This may sound silly, since most of those people are considered "untouchable" to the normal crowd. Yet, many young people are spending ample time listening to their advice, ways of thinking, views on sex/relationships, lifestyle, their worldview and value of life (or lack thereof).
In this blog post, Brian Graves specifically talks about the negative effects of music as it reads, "Most children between ages 2 and 18 spend upwards of seven hours a day ingesting some sort of media, " says Susan Buttross, MD, FAAP, chief of child development and behavioral pediatrics at the University of Mississippi and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Seven hours is more time than some young people spend do anything else such as homework, family time and even school. That's a lot of media
In another blog post written by a mother who took interest in her teenage son's school literature book, she was quite surprised to find the content of a school literature choice utterly disturbing. She described the book, which was approved by the school board, as pornographic. You can check out the full post here. (warning:explicit)
On another note, in a recent survey by the Federal Trade Commission, it was found that 47% of 13-16 year olds were able to purchase music with Parental Advisory labels, 24% purchased tickets to R-rated movies and 30% bought R-rated DVDs.
Do we really know what our young people are listening to, watching on T.V. and searching online? Do we know who is influencing them on a daily basis? Media has a very loud voice in the lives of today's young people. As parents, it's crucial that we get involved in the media choices of our children. It's our job to monitor and approve these choices. No one else is looking out for our kids. We cannot leave it in the hands of school boards, teachers, Parental Advisory labels, iTunes and Youtube.
Do you have ongoing conversations with your kids/teens about their media choices? Do you have a system worked out with them by which you monitor and/or approve these choices?
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