Talking about kids and screen time can immediately produce feelings of guilt or defensiveness for parents. Guilt, because we know how bad screens are for kids—especially when they take the place (as they always do) of more meaningful activities, like outside play, family time, or boredom. Defensiveness, because screens are very difficult to avoid and resist for our little ones; and everyone else is doing it! The discussion of limiting screen time for kids can at once seem incredibly relevant and nearly a mootpoint. Screen time feels like a given, and yet, thinking Christian parents cannot allow ourselves simply to take it for granted.
So, what to do? Many times we focus on screen time: how much and when. That discussion is important. Not often do I find myself agreeing with the World Health Organization, but I can get behind its recommendations about screen time for kids: none before age two and less than an hour a day for kids ages two to five.[1] However, addressing the amount of time our kids spend watching television is only the very first step in the discussion, and perhaps not the most important one. To be responsible in how we allow our kids to interact with passive visual media, we must also turn our attention to the content and quality of shows and movies we let into our homes. I would like to ask three questions to stimulate our thinking about the shows we allow for our children.
(1) Is this show claiming to educate or catechize my child?
Neil Postman warned us decades ago of television’s inability to teach—or rather, that when we attempt to use television in an educational or religious sense, the content is necessarily translated to fit the medium. Rather than turning the television into an avenue for religion or education, the television turns religion and education into entertainment.
Of education, Postman concludes that, when children are exposed to educational television programs, they learn “that learning is a form of entertainment or, more precisely, that anything worth learning can take the form of an entertainment, and ought to.”[2] Rather than disciplining the mind, building mental muscles of attention, observation, and rational and poetic thinking, educational television programs train children for what is exclusively easy, fun, and amusing.
Similarly, of religious programming, Postman states: “Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. [Postman himself was not a believer.] When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.”[3] Postman was speaking mainly about television preachers. While we may not sit our three-year-olds in front of John Hagee or T. D. Jakes, consider whether the Christian programming in which we engage is merely a version of animated Sunday school, turning Bible stories into trite moralisms.
Because we know that screen time is a less-than-ideal way for our little ones to spend an hour, we can be tempted to “redeem” it by attempting to make it educational or Christian. However, by doing so, it seems that we are only turning Christianity and education into passive activities to be consumed, not to be participated in.
Rather than turning to educational programming to attempt to make screen time a little better for our kids, we should utilize television for what it is best suited to: telling stories. There is nothing wrong with allowing our kids a good story, fittingly told and illustrated. Consider choosing your children’s television shows for their merits in storytelling, rather than asking television to do double duty as educator or rabbi.
(2) Does this show exhibit excellent craftsmanship and artistry?
When screening shows for our kids to watch, we are obviously concerned with the moral qualities and cultural agendas: Is there any questionable language? Are the children in the program disrespectful towards their parents or other authorities? Is good celebrated and evil defeated? These questions should be asked and answered well before we allow our kids to watch unattended.
However, there is another quality of television shows for children that I often find lacking and rarely hear parents address: the artistic merits of the shows as pieces of visual art. I know, “visual art” is a stretch if we are talking about CocoMelon. But that is exactly my point: many children’s shows exhibit very low-quality animation. They are not visually excellent; they are visually easy. They do not pull our children up into a space of creative beauty and imagination. They merely appease the brain with quick action and bright colors.
But if the show has decent morals, why does it matter whether it is well-crafted visually? The kids certainly have no qualms about such things! Let Stephen Turley, from his wonderful little book on cosmic piety and wonder in education (previously recommended), speak here: “[T]he Good is not merely revealed to the mind through Truth. A desire, an eros, is awakened for the Good within the human soul through kalos or ‘Beauty.’ . . . By awakening eros within us, Beauty provides us with the allure, the momentum, the gravitational pull toward the True and the Good.”[4]
Rather than seeing screen time as pure junk food, and thus not in need of much regulation, Turley’s statement leads me to believe that sharing beautiful televisual media with my child is a small piece in drawing them to desire the good. At the very least, we can cut out the worst artistic offenders, realizing that our children’s affections are trained very sharply by experiences of visual art—whether for good or ill.
(3) Does this show make my child a consumer of a brand?
Finally, consider to what extent a certain show or film is giving a foothold to a spirit of consumerism. To an extent, all television encourages consumerism—the role of the viewer is purely to consume. However, as with the point on art, some shows are worse offenders than others. In this vein, proceed cautiously about two things in particular: commercials and brand merchandise.
Commercials are an extremely powerful—and therefore, can be an extremely dangerous—form of media. Postman describes a McDonald’s commercial, for example, as “a drama—a mythology, if you will—of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune.”[5] Children are no match to the millions of dollars in market research that go into those thirty-second commercials between cartoons. Thankfully, we are no longer slaves to the television broadcast timetable: choose viewing formats that allow you to skip or avoid commercials.
Brand merchandise, on the other hand, is much more difficult to deal with if you choose to allow your child access to the shows from which they spring. In addition to the practical headache of either denying or succumbing to the desire for the toothpaste, cereal, pajamas, and tennis shoes with your child’s favorite character emblazoned on them, consider how allowing an affinity for a particular show or character can shape your child’s perception of himself and others. There are many unique and enriching facets of your child’s identity that they need to have ample time and space to develop an awareness of and confidence in: his cultural heritage, Christian tradition, family jokes, region’s weather pattern, job in the family, and favorite colors and toys and foods and books and play-pretend-games; Paw Patrol and Mickey Mouse can just take up too much room in his inner world.
Creators of children’s media do not see your child simply as someone who needs some good clean entertainment; they view your child as a potential customer. Commercials and the brand items associated with children’s shows market directly to your child. This fact can be mitigated by choosing older shows that are no longer heavily branded and by ensuring variety in viewing habits rather than developing a cult-following for a particular show or character.
Conclusion
Navigating television for our children is not a simple task, and it does not have a simple answer that will fit for everyone. I hope I have brought up a few important areas to consider that generally do not get as much talk-time in discussions on screen-time for kids. Andy Crouch’s book, The Tech-Wise Family (also previously recommended by contributor Zach Vickery), has been my favorite resource for both inspiring ideals and practical ideas for navigating technology in our family culture. Crouch says that “Technology is in its proper place only when we use it with intention and care.”[6] Let’s put intention and care into the how of screen time for our little ones, not simply the how much.
[1] See “To grow up healthy, children need to sit less and play more,” World Health Organization, April 24, 2019, https://www.who.int/news/item/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-more.
[2] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1985), 154.
[3] Ibid, 121.
[4] Stephen R. Turley, Awakening Wonder: A Classical Guide to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2014), 16.
[5] Postman, 128.
[6] Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place (Grand Rapids: Barna Group, 2017), 21.
September 10, 2022
Gracias Rebekah por compartir esos consejos con aquellos padres que están criando a sus hijos en estos tiempo y a la vez palabras de cautela para los abuelos que tenemos la oportunidad de interactuar con los nietos. Sigue compartiendo tus ideas Da a conocer tu fe y tu diario vivir con tus hijos poniendo a Dios en tu andar. I Tim 4:16, Bendiciones!!