Media: Good Or Bad Medicine For Children

2 Pages 501 Words

Media: Good or Bad Medicine for Children
It’s very true that in today’s media that evil and madness run rampant. There happens to be educational programs, commercials, and those that encourage morals and values. Television and radio play a tremendous and very critical role in shaping children’s lives. These resources can become meaningful, positive media experiences for children and young people.
All media are not to be counteracted. Many commercials and programs that are on television are to be agreed with. For example, the Sylvan Learning Center has a commercial that shows a little boy pleading with his mom to stay up a little later so that he can read to his little sister for a bit longer. Sesame Street helps parents in teaching their children the basics of kindergarten. Dora the Explorer explains the excitement of discovering the answer to life’s little problems. It would be counter productive to counter the culture of any such programs.
Parents have to tell their children “no” many times in their lives. These disagreements with their children are not the faults of the media. Blame is an easy game to escape responsibility of lack of parenting. Parents feel they can’t say “no” to a child for the fear of being a bad parent, so they have to point their finger at someone.
A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003 found that nearly
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half (47 percent) of parents with children between the age’s of four and six years old report that their children have imitated aggressive behaviors from television. However, it is interesting that they also found that children are more likely to mimic positive behaviors (87 percent of children do so).
It does seem that the news media always focus on the negativity and discard the positive things. For instance, every time you turn the television on you either see scenes from the war in Iraq or reports of children being abducted, raped, or even mutilated. ...