The digital age poses new, difficult, sometimes dangerous and disturbing challenges for parents and kids. More information and imagery is within easy reach of children than ever before, at a time when the idea of taking real responsibility for children seems to be in rapid decline.
Sanity begins with accepting that reality and responding to it calmly, rationally, and thoughtfully.
1. Young children should not be left on their own with new or old media, whether it be the Internet, TV newscasts, or paperbacks. Every kid in America could have seenLA police blow a bank robber's brains out last week, an image far more jarring and potentially disturbing than all the dirty words on AOL's teen chat in a month. No V-chip or blocking software would have intervened, unless parents ban all news programs altogether.
Information technology and popular culture, from cable to the Net, is too varied, unpredictable, and uncensorable to leave the youngest and most impressionable alone with it.
Parents, teachers, and day-care staffers should watch TV with young kids, go online with them, monitor what they're hearing and seeing and reading. Violent or sexual material, anything parents find disturbing, should be pointed out and discussed. Religious parents should ask their clergy to watch TV and videos, to venture online, and then to talk with young members of the congregation about the values they do or don't like there. It won't be like the old days, when children's cultural lives could be narrowly proscribed by religious and educational dogma. But it can make a big difference.
Kids need to be told what they see on a screen isn't necessarily what they can do in life or what is true in the world. Parents need to tell kids what imagery is offensive and unacceptable to them, and what to do if they encounter pornography.
2. The rules of new-media safety are simple, really. Tell young children that if something is overtly sexual, disturbing, or violent, they should turn if off or get a parent, teacher, or baby sitter. Prepare them for a world in which it is not only possible but likely they will come across images of people being shot, in news as well as entertainment. We might wish it weren't so, but it is. Tell them, "Never give out your name, phone number, address, or a password of any sort to anybody you don't know - ever. Don't accept any gifts or invitations without a trusted adult's permission."
3. Even preschoolers need to begin to learn how to deal with advertising imagery, which is still more pervasive in old than new media. Explain that they don't necessarily need US$100 sneakers. Or Tickle-Me Elmo. That the cute little characters on the animated Web sites they might come across (there is no reliable information on how many children visit these sites, or to what effect) are often selling unhealthy or unnecessary things, and they need to separate those characters from the things they are selling and make their own decisions about what they want.
4. Children need to be prepared to encounter sexual imagery on CDs, cable, and the Net. It's there, so they will come across some sooner or later. And if not there, they'll see it when a friend shows them a magazine, or a pirated videotape. Simple exposure to sexual imagery isn't in itself dangerous or harmful. Prolonged, chronic exposure to violent or degrading sexual imagery can be harmful, especially if children are already emotionally fragile or disturbed.
Young children need to be taught what kinds of sexual imagery, if any, are acceptable. When to turn the TV or computer off. How to respond.
5. In the same way that troubled adolescents are sometimes deeply affected by music or poetry, they can be drawn into obsessive or even potentially dangerous relationships online. Parents can't protect teenagers completely from the dangers of the online world any more than they can completely protect them offline. It's always smart to watch kids for signs of trouble - fatigue, moodiness, withdrawal, deceit - and to get help if you find them. It's also smart to remember that an infinitesimal number of kids have ever been harmed online - that it is a profoundly safe medium to explore and use.
6. America is a violent country. Since World War II, more than a million Americans have been killed by guns. In many urban neighborhoods, despite lower crime rates, the leading cause of death for minority males is still a bullet. Assault weapons and rifles are readily available. Wal-Mart won't sell unedited Nirvana, but it will sell knives and rifles, and handgun ammunition by special order.
Whether parents favor gun control or not, they need to teach their children how to deal with graphic imagery like the LA bank shootout, which can crop up on any TV at any time, as well as on radio newscasts, newsmagazines, or on the Net. There is no universal standard for what kind of violence is too much. Parents have to talk about it with their children, help gauge their tolerance.
7. Common-sense rules apply when dealing with new media and technology. Kids should be shown educational or other Web sites that parents like, and be encouraged to visit them. But parents need to understand that one of the inevitable consequences of the information revolution is that they can't completely protect or isolate their kids. And they also need to understand that the temptation to ban TVs or computers from the house is a profound one, with lots of economic, employment, social, and educational consequences down the road. Kids need to use this stuff. Their jobs and educational opportunities may literally depend on it.
Anybody who tells you that V-chips, blocking software, or ratings systems will reverse the reality of the digital age - that censorship is dead - is trying to pick your pocket. They won't work. You have no alternative but to do it yourself, to get qualified help, and to demand that educators stop whining about the end of literacy and start teaching.
And repeat after me: greedy record producers, TV executives, and Hollywood producers are never going to turn to wholesome, violence- and sex-free programming as long as so many of us are willing to watch and see the other stuff.
For those many parents who feel too busy to monitor their children, here's the bad news: Somebody has to supervise small children when it comes to media, technology, and culture. There's too much of it out there, and it's too uncontrollable for them to navigate alone. If you wait for film and TV producers to return to the world of the Cleavers, you'll be bitterly disappointed.
If children are supervised, if they're given a solid moral ground, if they are taught common-sense rules of safety, they will be able to handle just about anything culture and technology can throw at them as they grow up. Maybe they'll even choose not to see as many violent movies or TV shows as we do. That would really transform culture. By the time they're in their teens, kids will probably be able to make sound decisions, and withstand the occasional unsound ones, without your intervention. They have the right to do so. You will do better if you realize the sad truth that neither journalism nor politics bother to tell you the truth about this stuff. Mostly, both exploit your fears to make themselves appear useful or get themselves elected.
Online or off, there are good things and bad things on the information spectrum. Government can't regulate them any longer, even if we wanted them to, which many of us most passionately do not. Neither can Bennett's Virtue Calendar stickers, V-chips, or CyberNanny.
The moral issue involving children and media remains the same: that so many don't have any access to new technology and media at all. And that so many lack adequate supervision and protection from real perils. Bad schools harm many more of them than the Bud frogs ever will.
