Make Age-Appropriate Media Decisions

Written by Dick Staub

This article is courtesy of HomeLife.

I‘ve spent most of my life trying to get Christians to contribute to culture rather than retreat from it. However, there is an age-appropriate dimension to the relationship with culture.

This distinction was driven home to me by an experience I had picking up my 15-year-old daughter from volleyball practice. I overheard the banter of some young men whose football practice had finished early. Their language was sickeningly graphic and crude. Their talk was mostly posturing, but to spew out such filth so casually reflects their state of mind and the fallen condition of our culture.

At the risk of sounding reactionary, I think my daughter is in hostile territory. There are many contributors to crassness in today’s younger generation, but most parents realize electronic media are their children’s primary educators from the time they are young.

Former poet laureate Carl Sandburg recognized this early with the advent of TV, saying in the 1950s, “Anything that brings you to tears by way of drama does something to the deepest roots of our personalities. All movies, good or bad, are education, and Hollywood is the foremost educational institution on earth.”

Make wise choices
How do we equip our kids to make good media choices in the real world, while protecting them in the process?

First, when children are young, parents should decide what media kids can consume, while explaining to them how they are making these choices. The goal is to teach them how to be discerning.

Some parents will choose to eliminate media consumption altogether, and for some kids this is effective. Unfortunately, because parents can’t control kids’ media choices when they are with their friends, these kids are missing the benefit of learning how to make decisions with their parents.

Second, as kids head into middle school, parents should encourage them to initiate their own decisions, then discuss and approve kids’ media choices. By this point kids should understand the kinds of questions parents ask about media: Is it helpful? Does it bring me under its power? Does it hurt others? Does it have an addictive, controlling influence? Does it glorify God?

Finally, by the time kids can drive, parents should delegate media decisions, reserving the right to advise but allowing kids to make mistakes while they are still living at home. This can be scary, but I’d rather my kids make some bad decisions while they’re still  in the home where I can be involved, than to wait until they are out on their own and beyond my influence.

Decide, discuss, and delegate. Knowing how and when to move on to the next phase is dependent on the individual child, and, of course, on the comfort level of the parent. But given the hostile world our kids are growing up in, we owe it to them to both protect and prepare them for life in this fallen culture.

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