Posted on August 11, 2016 at 8:00 am
Parents are never prepared to answer the “Where do babies come from?” question. When writer/director Evan Blank was asked to write a comically awkward scene, he remembered his own conversation with his father. Twinkies and Donuts is his cute, comedically awkward, short film shows how one dad (Elon Gold) handled it. (Mature humor)
Posted on June 2, 2016 at 3:14 pm
Personal cloud storage company MiMedia has released the results of a survey of parents.
76% of parents admit to running out of storage on their phones from taking too many photos/videos of their kids
71% think Moms take more photos of their kids than Dads
Nearly 3 out of 5 parents (58%) say their child (age 0-3) was able to operate a touchscreen digital device by swiping before they learned to speak
57% think Moms share too many baby photos on social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
Almost half (47%) of parents say their child (age 0-3) likes taking selfies
47% of parents share at least 1 photo/video on average of their child (age 0-3) per day, whereas 34% don’t share any
1 out of 3 parents (34% ) takes 1 video on average of their child (age 0-3) per day, whereas 13% of parents take 5+ videos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
28% take 2 photos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
Almost 1 out of 3 parents (28%) admits to taking substantially more photos of their first born than other children
22% of parents take 5+ photos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
13% of parents take 5+ videos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
Parents should be careful to make sure they are spending more time interacting with their children than taking pictures and videos of them — and that children learn about how to behave with people before they learn about how to interact with machines.
Posted on May 9, 2016 at 11:19 pm
The television ratings system has failed badly. It is secret, inconsistent, and completely out of touch with current technology. There is no accountability or oversight and no way to challenge the decisions made by insiders. I am proud to join with 28 organizations devoted to protecting children and media literacy in calling for a review by the FCC.
The content ratings system as currently constituted is deeply flawed because the power to assign program content ratings was assigned to the same networks where the content originates. This has created an inherent and tremendous conflict of interest: It is to a network’s advantage to mis-rate its programming for a younger audience so as to gain a larger viewing audience; and a majority of corporate advertisers choose not to advertise on television programming that is rated for Mature Audiences Only. Unlike motion pictures and video games, there is no independent evaluation of the age-based rating system for television.
An incorrect content rating renders the V-chip worthless. If a parent programs their television’s V-chip to block programs rated as appropriate for “Mature Audiences Only,” their child will still be exposed to graphic and explicit material. Whether accidental or intentional, an informal practice has developed whereby broadcast networks never rate any of their programming “mature only,” no matter how graphic, explicit or inappropriate its content may be for children. As a result, extreme, graphic content is rated appropriate for 14-year-old children; and other programs with adult content are even rated PG.The TV Parental Guidelines Oversight Monitoring Board (TVOMB) has enabled and sheltered this flawed content ratings system, rather than following its Congressional and FCC mandate to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the system:
TVOMB is not accountable to anyone outside its own membership, nor is it transparent to the parents it supposedly serves. Most Americans don’t even know TVOMB exists. They don’t know that TVOMB is in charge of the ratings system, or how to contact its members.
Parents have never been told the names of those who sit on TVOMB; why they are qualified to sit on TVOMB; how they are appointed; when or where TVOMB meets; how they determine what content ratings TV programs ought to have; or how they respond to complaints from parents and other citizens.
The public is not allowed to attend TVOMB meetings. Representatives from the FCC are not allowed to attend meetings. Members of the press are not allowed to attend meetings. There is no transparency beyond the TVOMB members.
TVOMB is composed of a chairman and 23 members, including six members each from the broadcast television industry, the cable industry, and the program production community. There are only five non-industry seats on a board of 23, despite the board’s express purpose being to serve the needs of parents; and as of this writing, not all five of the non-industry seats are filled. Of those five non-industry seats on TVOMB, all are appointed by the TVOMB chairman (an industry member).
In other words, the body charged with oversight of the television content ratings system is comprised of those whom it is supposed to be monitoring. Under the current system, the same people who create TV content then rate the content they’ve created, and also run the board that oversees the rating process. They also produce an occasional public opinion survey that validates the current system.
Posted on April 24, 2016 at 8:00 am
Posted on February 26, 2016 at 8:00 am
Science of Us reports on a new paper about the way money, class, and status are portrayed in films for children. It is Benign Inequality: Frames of Poverty and Social Class Inequality in Children’s Movies published in the Journal of Poverty by Dr. Jessi Streib, Miryea Ayala, and Colleen Wixted. Some of the findings:
The films mostly feature wealthy primary characters. The researchers evaluated the films’ content to divide primary characters into five classes, from “upper class” to “poor,” and discovered that more than 56 percent of the films’ primary characters were in the top two categories, upper class or upper middle class (it turns out Santa Claus is upper middle class). So, at least compared to the real-world distribution of wealth, middle- and lower-class characters were significantly underrepresented.
The films mostly make class out to not be a big deal. Streib and her co-authors note that even when characters from lower classes are represented, “their hardships are generally downplayed or erased.”
Of course, these portrayals are not unique to movies. Films like “Cinderella” and “Aladdin” are based on old stories. And fiction for all ages tends to speak to our fantasies about having money and power or by outsmarting those who do. But studies like these provide an important reminder that parents should use what children see as an opportunity to talk to them about their values and let them know that they should ask (privately) any time they have questions about money, class, and status.
