Is it okay to give a two-year old a bottle of hot sauce to drink?
Of course not. If you saw another parent doing so, you’d likely call child services for such reckless action. You know that even though a baby needs food to live, allowing it to ingest certain foods at certain ages just isn’t healthy.
If that’s true, think about this: are you doing enough to prevent your children from ingesting media that’s just as dangerous to their mental health and well being?
Media content is food. We consume it. Digest the information from it to mentally grow and learn things – from knowledge to social skills. With media, like food, we can overeat or consume media that contains little nutritious information to promote mental growth. Plus while ingesting media, kids can take in dangerous data ingredients that can influence their minds through promoting behaviors and attitudes around drinking, violence, ethics, personal safety and sexualization before they’re ready.
To exacerbate the problem, trends show that such media content is seeping into younger and younger aged media programming. Very alarming as children, already more likely to be uncritical of media messages, will be influenced. For instance, according to Kidshealth.org, children that view violent acts are more likely to show aggressive behavior. Plus they are more likely to fear that the world is scary and that something bad will happen to them.
Over time, what can also happen is mental obesity. A condition of the mind akin to physical obesity, where poor media consumption (large, low quality and taste driven) habits can make children mentally flabby, intellectually lazy and easily swayed by future media messaging.
Even though parents can be overwhelmed by all the ways their children can get access to media, it’s important for parents to maintain an active role in managing their children’s media consumption. The good news: you don’t have to be a media analysis expert. Instead think like the food preparer of the house. Treat your children’s media habits like a food diet. Use it to help them to learn to balance their media intake. Some tips how:
1) Balance your children’s craving for “yummy” tasting media with nutritious media.
Taste or the attraction of media content and quality of the ingredients contained within are not the same thing. Let them enjoy entertainment media, but also make sure they also get exposed to more educational, historical and thought-provoking content.
2) Teach media diet skills
If you teach children good media consumption skills early in life, they’ll carry it into adulthood.
3) Don’t let technology atrophy their mental skills.
Childrens’ increasing reliance on technology for fun, imagination, social connection and learning may diminish mental skills normally developed in the act of just being a child. Encourage children to learn skills that allow them to function without such technology tools.
A healthy media diet and media literacy is just as important to your child’s growth and well being as the food they eat daily. And with the average child media consumption time of over 4 hours daily, it might be even more. Your kids are what they eat. When it comes to media consumption, make sure they’re eating healthy.
For more about this and to learn more about media literacy skills and avoid what I call “mental obesity,” read my book Does This News Make Me Look Fat? It’s available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the iBookstore.