Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/empowering-parents-and-teachers-to-protect-children/5012853/
Parents across the country are feeling powerless to control the impact of our increasingly intrusive and disturbing media culture. They have concerns that certain images are unhealthy for children, but many of them are unaware of what the research says about the risks of exposure to inappropriate content. Child care providers and teachers also often wonder what their policies should be about showing television and movies to the children under their care. In spite of the fact that many people in the entertainment industry still deny that harm occurs, there is a wealth of scientific evidence that can be very helpful to parents, schools, and child care centers in making decisions about children's viewing.Much public discussion has focused on the important issue of how viewing violence contributes to our children becoming more aggressive. Research has made it very clear that repeated exposure to glamorized and trivialized media violence contributes to children's adoption of violence-prone attitudes and to their emotional desensitization. But in addition to these risks, our frenzied and violent media culture often traumatizes our children, producing severe anxieties and often long-lasting psychological scars.
What can parents do - and what can child care programs do - to protect children from the ...