Pop Culture’s Negative Influence on Our Kids

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This is one of those times when one of your emails says it all.  The following email puts every parent on notice with respect to the proper protection of their children from influences which hurt their souls: 

“Hi Dr. Laura!  I type reports for some youth programs and typed a report a few weeks ago that has been on my mind. This report said that this particular teenager had been using very offensive swear words since the age of 5 when this person saw an R-rated movie. My first question was “What is a 5-year-old doing watching an R-rated movie?” Where is the parent? Another report indicated that one teenager had started inhaling cocaine after seeing it done in a movie. I see kids being influenced by the media all over.

As a teenager many years ago, I was taught that our minds are like a camera - i.e., taking a picture that you can’t get out–so be careful about what you put in it. Many people are concerned about the effects of violent video games and truly believe that these games will affect kids, but why don’t they use the same standard about movies that have sex (especially explicit sex) and vulgar language in them? That sticks every bit as much as violence. Once something has entered your mind, it is changed.

Today, I read in a local paper about a study that was done regarding teens and media (television and movies) containing sexual content. The teens who watched media with sexual content were more likely to engage in such behaviors than those who did not.

We would never invite a stranger into our home without knowing their purpose. Yet, every day we invite strangers into our homes when we turn on television or put a movie on. We think we know these people–they’re on the front cover of every magazine at the checkout. These people often, don’t have our best interests at heart or the best interests of our kids at heart. They are there to make money, and generally, that is their only purpose. I’m amazed at some of the talk show hosts and authors that have shared their infidelities, whether on TV or in books, like it is a badge of honor. They will certainly take credit for lending their influence in the [recent] presidential campaigns, but they certainly would not take credit for their influence in the lives of today’s teens in the terms of drugs and sex.

We have choices! We as parents need to be more judicious as to what we will allow in our homes and what we will allow our kids to be exposed to within our realm. We need to love our kids and ourselves enough to turn “that program” off and spend our time with our kids or developing ourselves. Our kids are influenced by a lot of other people away from the home, but when they return to the home, we do have the influence to reinforce the difference between good and bad, right and wrong.

 Thank you so much for all that you do to fight the negative effects on the family!”

When you’re so busy, busy, or have long given up on taking the leadership role in raising your children, or you’re way too easily dissuaded by popular culture from having moral standards and values by which you wish to raise your family, your children become prey and the predators are many.  Like vampires, they wait to suck the blood out of your children’s souls and psyches, leaving them to the forces of their immaturity and the allure of their impulses.

Your children need you to take stands…their futures depend on it!

Kids and Media Exposure to Sex

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A listener labeled his email to me:
 
“The Newest Movie “Trash” Banned in Utah! Go Utah!” 
I read recently that some parts of Utah had banned the release of the new film “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”. The film is about a guy and girl who have nothing better in their dull lives to do but to produce a pornographic film together just for the fun of it. I, for one, am sick and tired of films that exploit women AND men!!! Whatever happened to going to the cinema and watching a good movie?

Thank God that Utah, a state that won’t forfeit its values and morals, stands up to films such as these, and won’t let them play in theaters there. I am a high school teacher, and believe me, Dr. Laura, our kids are craving to be taught values and morals. They want direction. They need direction. Films like these are teaching them that sex is just something that can be played with. I teach a student who has been sexually abused by his own stepfather, and I’m trying to guide him and show him a bit of comfort that he has never received….It breaks my heart to know what he has suffered, and it also breaks my heart to see students being exposed to trashy sex and stupid behavior on film. This kind of sick mess makes our jobs much more difficult in the teaching arena…. it’s time that we did something about this trash that’s being shown to our children. “

This email coincided with a US News and World Report study that sounds like “yes/no yes/no” silliness. The new research suggests that teens who spend the most time watching sexually charged television shows are twice as likely to become pregnant or impregnate someone else.

No kidding.  My generation grew up on The Flying Nun and Leave it to Beaver.  I never knew anyone who knew anyone who got pregnant in high-school. 

Here’s where the back-and-forth nonsense begins.  First, the report says that these findings don’t prove that sexy programming causes pregnancy - well, of course it doesn’t “cause” pregnancy.  But it is clear that a permissive media has a huge influence on impressionable teens, opening them up to behaviors which are not in their best interests, emotionally or medically. 

Interestingly, the researchers refused to “name names” with respect to which television shows they considered “sexually charged.”  I guess they don’t want to be open to lawsuits for suggesting that there are specific programs on the air that hurt children by opening them up to behaviors which could lead to unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, or the psychological trauma of sexual abuse.

Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington who studies kids and television says that these findings “add to the growing body of evidence that what children see on screen affects their behavior in real life.”  I’ve always gotten a laugh from much of what psychological research - a soft science at best - finds.  They state the obvious like it was a revelation and they get grant money to do it. 

Let’s see, if we didn’t think that media impacted how people behave in real life, how long would the advertising business last?  Oh please, they pay millions for product placement movies…to influence you,   They pay millions for seconds of promotion on SuperBowl Sunday…to influence you.  It must work.  So to be “surprised” at the impact of images and behavior the media immerses our children in has got to be some kind of joke.

Back to the beginning… hooray for Utah.  Parents who want to expose their children to “trash” can always buy it on the Internet.

Everybody Lies, Everybody Cheats

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One television show I’m both intrigued by and ambivalent about is called House.  It’s a medical drama in which the main character, a physician, is a diagnostic genius…except that he almost kills his patients a number of times until he brilliantly deduces the correct problem.

One problem he and his associates always have in diagnosing these strange presenting disorders is that, as Dr. House says, “everybody lies.”  It would seem that patients will withhold information essential to their proper treatment because of shame, guilt, embarrassment or to get out of some potential problem — even if it threatens their lives!  Sometime during the one-hour drama, for better or worse, the truth comes out.  Moral debates sometimes arise about the value of truth and honesty.

During my radio program, I have often cautioned people about being too flippant with honesty…it is, in fact, not always the best policy.  For example, “Your child is ugly and below average in intelligence!” or “Aging is sure being mean to you…look at all the wrinkles between your chin and your chest!”  Now, they may be honest assessments, but must all truths be spoken if they are going to hurt someone with no reasonable or positive motivation or intent?  My answer is, “no.”  My answer is to find something sweet and kind to say…there always are those aspects of a person or a situation.

However, there are circumstances where the truth is essential; and sadly, so few of our young people believe that is so.  Every school age child in America knows that a sitting, married President looked right into the television news cameras and lied about having had a sexual relationship with a young, single intern.  What was astonishing was how quickly his supporters and political party members were to dismiss this kind of lying since it was “personal.” 

It’s funny how “personal” impacts the world.  ABC News produced a story about college cheating using the most advanced devices our technology has to offer.  The piece centered on a Texas college freshman, Kiko Kho, who had used a see-through plastic pen, opened up the back and slipped in a strip of paper with vocabulary words on it so that she would pass her French exam.  If you think it is remarkable that she admitted all this to a reporter…hang on to something…she posted a video on YouTube detailing how she’d pulled off her cheat that received more than 120,000 hits.  Did she show remorse and argue against cheating?  Nope.  She did admit “it’s not a good thing to cheat,” followed up quickly by “everybody has done it.” 
    
Our young people watch television political talk and debates and hear time and time again…”that’s not true,”  “that’s false,” or “that’s a lie.”  When I was a child all I heard about was that President George Washington didn’t lie about that cherry tree…that was something to aspire to!

In Jasper, Indiana, two of three challengers for a congressional seat have agreed to be hooked up to lie detectors during an October 21 debate, but an official with the incumbent’s party dismissed the idea.  The Republican Party Chairman made this proposal to Democratic Incumbent and the GOP and Libertarian challengers.  The only one who declined to comment was the Democratic Incumbent…now that just looks bad.

I think all political debaters, product promoters, attorneys, teachers, scientists, and students in exams should take advantage of lie detection technology…and that’s the truth!

T-Mobile is Off My Radar

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Perhaps you’ve seen the TV ad?  It begins with a family scene, where the father has gotten one of that company’s cell phones, which permits the selection of certain people as “favorites.”  Everyone is making suggestions as to who should be among his “favorites,” and the eight-year-old son, in front of Mommy, suggests that Dad put in the number of the woman he stares at during the son’s ball games!  There is absolutely no reaction from anyone.

The teenage daughter then suggests her boyfriend (who has a mustache), and the Dad says that the “fine print” indicates that no kid with a mustache is permitted, and then he proceeds to call his daughter “dude.”

Using behaviors destructive to families is not my idea of good sales practices.  T-Mobile is off my radar.  I can’t imagine a group of executives sitting around in a brainstorming session thinking this would make for a great sales incentive.  I can’t imagine TV executives agreeing to play these ads.  I can’t imagine anyone at home watching and thinking “this is cute,” and feeling driven to buy T-Mobile’s products or services.  I can’t imagine ever buying one of their products.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys in “The Closer”

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I have been a big fan of the television show The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick.  It has a great ensemble cast, and it’s fun to watch the (generally implausible) twists and turns as she has those “aha!” moments, based on some innocuous comment made by someone totally unrelated to the situation at hand.

One recent episode, however, ended on an entirely amoral note.  Frankly, the plots are often too complicated to summarize, but here goes: an illegal alien takes sanctuary in a church to avoid deportation and to avoid becoming a murder victim at the hands of international drug-dealing “bad guys.” The bad guys are “setting up” the illegal so that he will end up in prison, where they can kill him for his lack of loyalty.  Apparently, if you’re the target of a “hit,” being in prison makes you quite accessible, because you’re surrounded by bad guys who’ll contract out the job in exchange for cigarettes, comic books, or whatever.

A policeman from the drug-providing country comes to “help,” but turns out to be one of the bad guys.  Kyra, the “closer” of the title, upon discovering his true mission, threatens to put him in jail under the name of the illegal in order to 1) scare him into talking, and 2) possibly give the illegal good guy a new identity.

I thought that the threat was a clever ploy.  However, the “bad guy” foreign policeman didn’t collapse under the threat.  Kyra followed through with her threat, and he was subsequently misidentified as the illegal alien “good guy” and murdered while in custody.  Now the illegal alien had his own special type of witness protection program.

The program actually ended that way - with no one questioning the immorality or illegality of Kyra setting up the foreign cop for murder by his fellow bad guys.  It just ended up with everyone being content with the outcome.

While it is particularly satisfying to me when bad guys get their just deserts, it is not satisfying to watch role-models misuse the system to exact their own vengeance.  I was tremendously disappointed with the writers and producers, and with Kyra for agreeing to leave the story line intact.

First Comes Sex…

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When I was a kid, all the sitcoms showed married couples sleeping in separate beds.  Evidently, it was unseemly to show married couples sharing the same mattress, lest the idea of “sex” pop into anybody’s mind!

These days, it appears that TV finds marriage unseemly - but not the sex.

A recent study by the Parents Television Council shows that marriage gets little respect on network television.  Instead, extra-marital, kinky sex, partner-swapping, and pedophilia are more likely to get center screen.

The report said that visual references to practices such as voyeurism and sado-masochistic sex outnumbered married sex references by a ratio approaching 3 to 1.  The report contends “Behavior that once was seen as fringe, immoral, or socially destructive has been given the imprimatur of acceptability by the television industry and children are absorbing or even imitating it.”

When parents want to identify and block such programs via the V-Chip, they’re lulled into complacency by the inaccurate and inconsistent designations, such as “S,” signaling sexual content.

The programs the Parents Television Council included in their report were from four weeks of scripted shows on the major networks at the start of the 2007-2008 season.  ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, and NBC, the networks in the study, all declined to comment.

It’s disgusting that the so-called “family hour,” the first hour of prime-time TV, which draws the most young viewers, contains the highest ratio of references to non-married sex vs. married sex.

The Moment of Truth

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In a never-ending supply of lows, TV’s newest contribution to the destruction of dignity, modesty, and compassion is on the Fox Network, entitled “The Moment of Truth.”  The basic concept is to have people admit to immoral, illegal, embarrassing, stupid, crass or just plain dumb behavior while attached to a “polygraph,” which purports to determine whether the answer given by the contestant is “truthful.”  Truthful answers are rewarded by cash, up to a half-million dollars.  It’s sickening to see what some folks will destroy in their own souls and relationships for money - even a lot of money.

The New York Times (January 25, 2008) described a scenario on the series’ premiere show: 

‘Ty, a personal trainer, said ‘yes’ when asked if he has delayed having children because he is not sure that Catia, his wife of 2 1/2 years, would be his ‘lifelong partner.’  After he replied, a disembodied female voice delivered the verdict:  ‘The answer is….(long dramatic beat) TRUE!’  The camera panned to Catia, who stopped smiling and murmured ‘I’m dying here.’  Her friend, April, turned to her and asked in a semi-whisper ‘Is it worth $100,000 to learn that?’”Well, financially, it wasn’t worth anything because when Ty was asked whether he had ever touched a female client more than was strictly necessary, his “no” was determined by the polygraph to be a lie, and he lost all his winnings

This is sick stuff.  All truths ought not to be spoken.

There is a new film out with a plot that I believe appropriately condemns society for caving into the basest part of human nature.  There is a “bad” guy who murders people and puts their lingering, torturous death on the Internet live.  The more people who log on….the faster and more horrific the victim’s death.  What happens?  Well, more people log on.  The parallel is inescapable.  Shame on Fox, but more so, shame on us.