Our Children as Economic Targets
| No one sets out to harm our children with their media products -they are just trying to make a buck. But many in the entertainment industry are cashing in on our children's natural desire for excitement,with products that may help them towards emotional and social isolation in the future. Much of this media and video games tramples their natural sensitivity and deaden their senses and thrust them too soon into a world of adult fears. As parents,we love our children and want them to have and experience everything exciting our society can offer; which makes them and us an excellent market to exploit . And unfortunately parents are often too trusting of products made for children; they imagine; if it is made for children it cannot be bad for them(ie Disney's Bambi). Very young children need to be protected from media where characters are dripping with evil and sarcasm such as you would never encounter in real life but which is thrust at the child at unnatural speeds and in theatres in close ups that are 40 feet tall! We have mechanisms in our mind to protect us from fear of these things; “its just a cartoon” etc… but our children have no such mechanisms especially the 2,3, 4 year olds. Worse yet, the line between what is real and what is fantasy is very fuzzy with small children The goal of these entertainment producers is generally not to edify, to enrich, to enlighten our youth but merely to sell them something. What will prompt a child to want to watch something; depending on the age, bright colors, fast action, perhaps something scary which prompts a kind of dare yourself to watch mentality, and fear which generates a kind of sickening draw like our urge to see the victim when we pass a car crash. So much of what we offer children today is junk food for the mind. And the problem with junk food is not just the moment you consume it, it is the tendency toward wanting more of it and loosing interest in good food; the natural world, classical literature and other enriching experiences whose rewards often take effort to retrieve. Here are our societies most precious resources, our most precious new citizens, in their most delicate and vulnerable state, we cannot leave them to an industries whose main interest is to make money on them. How can we be doing this ? Misplaced trust . Trust of the industries by the gatekeepers and protectors of our nations children; the parents. Surely we know there are many who are aware of these dangers; but for every parent who is wary there are 10 who are not. We, as a nation need to protect them all. |
Harmful Media
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