Your Children Are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You

Pediatrics that young children should have
no
exposure to screens until they are two years old. Those hours of “screen time” increase dramatically as children progress through preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school.
    Contrary to conventional wisdom, early exposure to technology such as home computers actually hurts academic achievement. For example, a study of elementary school students found that test scores declined when computers were introduced into homes and that children with readily accessible computers scored lower than peers who did not use computers regularly. The research concluded that lack of parental monitoring and guidance and time spent on non-educational computer use were the primary reasons for the test-score disparity.
    Beyond popular culture devoted to young children, the landscape seems far bleaker. If you deconstruct the messages in popular culture aimed at older children and young adults, you will uncover values of superficiality, materialism, disrespect, irresponsibility,greed, voyeurism, and selfishness. You may be thinking, “But my children are still so young. They aren’t exposed to that sort of popular culture.” In fact, your young children may be exposed to adult-oriented popular culture far more than you realize both in and away from your home. For example, at home, you are probably exposing them to whatever popular culture interests you, the TV shows and movies you watch, the music you listen to, the magazines you read. The same holds true for their older siblings. Away from home, your children are bombarded by popular culture through billboards and store advertising and displays. For example, at the supermarket, child-oriented products (read junk food) are deliberately placed at the height of children in grocery carts. In fact, recent research has shown that children demonstrate brand recognition and loyalty as early as three years of age. As one executive of a cereal company noted, “When it comes to targeting kid consumers, we … follow the Procter & Gamble model of ‘cradle to grave.’ We believe in getting them early and having them for life.”
    Parents often recognize the dangers of popular culture, but don’t always take action against it. In the survey of 1,600 parents I referenced earlier, parents overwhelmingly expressed the belief that popular culture sends truly harmful messages to children. For example, about 75 percent said that they are concerned about the negative impact of peers and the media on their children. And many of these parents expressed greater worry about the negative influence of popular culture on raising children with healthy values than about practical concerns such as paying the bills. As one mother noted in the survey, “It’s basically exhausting. What’s hard is … keeping the world at bay until you’ve formed these kids, so that they can learn to make their own decisions and live in the real world.”
    These early messages can have a profoundly negative effect on children’s behavior as they develop. For example, several studies found that children who were exposed to adult media were more likely to engage in sensation-seeking and risk-taking behavior.Other research reported that children whose access to adult media was restricted by their parents were not as likely to drink, smoke, have sex, or act violently as compared to children whose parents set no limits on exposure to adult media.
    You might argue that, because you can’t keep your children in a bubble forever, they should be exposed to some popular culture. Certainly, small doses of popular culture will not hurt them. And, yes, children do need to learn how to defend themselves against popular culture at some point. But young children are at such an important and impressionable stage of development that exposing them to too much popular culture so early could be harmful. Wouldn’t you rather send your children out into that world after you have prepared them?
    For its sheer pervasiveness and inescapability, popular culture is the most difficult message blocker confronting you. In fact, you will never be able to fully safeguard your growing children from the unhealthy messages sent by popular culture. Your only real hope is to delay their entrance into popular culture until they are prepared. In the meantime, you can immunize them with positive messages so that when they are faced with popular culture in full force in the next few years, the defaults formed from