Media has taken on a life of its own with the advancement of technology it has become ever so social in its own right! With internet all over the place phones are making so much easier to connect, we’ve got IPod this and Ipad that and don’t forget the little green Android guy. They are all ways and means of connecting and being social and getting in touch with the world around us and all of its elements.
Our youth have access to social media sights such as Facebook, MySpace, twitter, YouTube, and the hundreds of others that are out there and they are ok in within certain boundaries. They people to connect with family and friends and even make friends from parts of the world we may never be able to visit. We can learn about different cultures and customs from food to dress to native music the world becomes our classroom, and that is great a wonderful. However just as our young ones can soak up all of this goodness there are some messages that are inappropriate for them at certain ages and quite frankly for my age as well. So we have to moderate what media mediums we allow are children to access. Television has changed over the years in some ways for the good and in some ways for the bad. They have added a lot of programming that act as a learning tool for younger children who are daycare to I would say about 1st grade such as the nick jr channel teaching educational lessons as well as social lessons and Disney kids and the like.
On the other side of the token some of the programming on TV is very loose profanity is common place, an increase on screen nudity and sexual provocativeness. Even on Disney the other day kept hearing my kids talk about this new show they just had to watch called my babysitter is a vampire, I am very subjective about what I allow my kids to watch on TV because of the message that it sends, so just by the name I told them no. So I was sick this week and they were all in my bed with me and the begged to watch it and I gave in so I could see what it was about and after I watched it I was so appalled at Disney for feeding such (excuse my French) “crap” to kids it was ridiculous. My oldest daughter was calling her younger sister to come and do something and the little one said she is such an “evil witch” ….hold up put the brakes on! That show immediately got banned from their watch list.
Even with the radio you have to be careful about the music that they listen to because they all send messages that influence people, some good messages and some bad so you have to do your due diligence and weed out the bad stuff.
With the social media my oldest child has a Facebook page and my husband and I have the password we check it quite frequently to make sure things are on the up and up and anything that isn’t we quickly question it and put it in check.
So the word of the day here when it comes to media outlets is to monitor what is coming across to your young one, be vigilant and understand that not everything is age appropriate. I’ve seen some kids who are in the second grade with Facebook pages, and my question is why? There is eschoolfriends.com which is a social networking site where kids that age can socialize in a safe environment and it is geared for that demographic and has educational games and all kind of cool stuff that is age appropriate. Media is a great way to socialize and connect and learn but it is our duty as adults as parents to regulate what goes into our young ones. I remember one year where MySpace was all a craze and some of the kids at the church had MySpace pages and when Pastor realized some of the things that were happening on MySpace he had all of the kids including his own shut their pages down. Saying that to say, that we all have a responsibility to monitor the media messages that we allow ourselves and our young ones to be exposed to.
