Turn the TV off

I’ve been thinking about the impact that the media has on our self-perception as women, minorities, etc, because it’s something that interests me. Much of what I’ve encountered is negative. For instance, the scarcity of positive black role models in the TV and print media leaves children feeling that there is not much for them to aspire to. As for black females, they take away from the media the idea that dark tones of skin and frizzy hair are to be detested, as are curvy figures.

This is heart-breaking, of course. But I also read something that got me wondering. It was an article about media consumption patterns among different racial and ethnic groups. According to the piece, black children spent significantly more time watching television programming than kids of any other ethnic group. That made me think about the roles we played as consumers, whether active or passive. And I did wonder whether there was something more we could be doing as individuals to make a difference in our children’s lives.

Are we all really as helpless as we make ourselves sound when we talk about the negative effects of the media on our kids? Do our kids have to be plugged in to Hollywood’s version of the world? What would it be like if we stopped being such avid consumers of empty, soulless programming and shallow magazine articles? What if we stopped feeding our children images of materialism, mediocrity and dysfunction?

I realize that many people turn to the TV and other forms of media to keep their kids occupied because they have limited options. Perhaps they’re working two or three jobs to put food on the table and can’t sit down to supervise their kids. Perhaps a sitter is beyond their budget. Perhaps having the kids go outside and play is not an option because the streets are unsafe. They likely recognize that plonking the kids in front of the TV is not the best option, but are trying to make do with what they have.

But is it really true that there are no options or alternatives? I would like to believe that people have some degree of agency, even in very difficult situations. Maybe they can’t reform the media, but they can certainly be more selective about their children’s consumption of it. Kids don’t have to watch or hear everything, even if it has been rated suitable for their age group. That applies to both TV and radio. Video games should also be included in this discussion. While some video games can be remarkably educational, others can be disturbingly realistic in their portrayal and glorification of violence and sexism.

Books are the most ideal form of information and entertainment that come to mind. When I was growing up, electronics and video games were out of reach. Our only consistent way to amuse ourselves, outside of playing or doing our chores, was to read. And that we did with gusto. All the kids I knew, whether poor, middle class, well-off, rural, or urban appreciated a good book. We made a habit of borrowing books from each other and buying second hand books. Brand new books would have been beyond our budgets, and functional libraries were like some rare species that you caught sight of once in a while.

That is why I wonder why it is easy for many Americans to identify books with elitism, and TV with the average guy’s experience. In my experience, books are actually cheaper to acquire in the first place, and to continue to use, while anything electrical or electronic is on the pricier side. Mind you, I’m not talking about heading to expensive bookstores or buying an e-reader. I’m talking about joining a local library, and getting access to thousands of books at no cost to yourself, or buying secondhand books. It amazes me that getting kids to appreciate books over cable TV, electronics, and video games can be a challenge in the American context. In an ideal world, books would be valued more highly, and literacy would have a higher priority than chest-thumping about being the greatest nation in the world.

It must be said, though, that even books have to be vetted. It’s not enough to grant one’s children access to books. One must also know what they are reading. Wherever possible, parents and guardians of impressionable kids have to play a more proactive role in determining what kinds of images they are being exposed to.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.