Media immersion, parenting, and grains of salt
common sense this, divide your im time from your game time or facebooking for a survey...?
Consider the slide above for a minute, now think about it for a few minutes more, in that time you most likely have gotten an email, im or facebook notification at the same time. I have trouble with the concept of measuring these kinds of activities mostly cause they are happening at the same time. There is an immersion with all pieces of the pie in some devices or apps. To draw a conclusion, inference or even suggesting this survey mechanism is even relevant or accurate is kind of silly. Plus, if the ultimate point is to say more media time equals dumber kids then its just wrong. If the point is that parents matter, I would maintain a more useful study would have tracked carefully the activities, and parenting of the kids with the poor test scores…more than likely its not all the media exposure….maybe I’m saying the same thing the deck presents…
DUH! “All things in moderation”
Have you ever talked to an 8-18 year old? I have and the more things change the more they stay the same, with one difference…the parents. The socialization processes and siloed nature of the technology allows for ’separation language’ models, which have existed as long as we’ve been having children. The main difference is that the distance and speed at which these factors work has increased overtime. Parents can’t keep up, won’t or are unable and working with that much information and technology is overwhelming.
Anyone reading this could swap the pie pieces up top for stuff from their own 8-18yr period of their own life…point is amounts of media exposure and the rest of it don’t excuse plain old parenting…cause between 0-18yrs its really parenting that is the ultimate ground wire for kids…
My parents, while strict’ish and no sparing of the rod and spoiling of the children was a non issue.
I had Atari
I had social networking, at the school yard, skating rink, friends’ panelling filled basements
I watched VHS movies, walked into the ‘adult section’ of west coast video ‘by accident’
I spent time on our TRS 80 model 1
I visited ‘web-sites’ like the library, radio shack, Champion Arcade, The inferno at the skating rink
I passed notes in school aka instant messaging
I made mix tapes and shared them with friends aka itunes genius mixes
We ,meaning all of this readers regardless of age, did all the same stuff and because the venue or form has changed that somehow its rotting the brain…of which only 10% is used…
This is nothing more, IMHO, bullshit…bad, super-nanny necessary, lazy, busy, ill-equipped or selfish, absent, well-meaning, esteem challenged, overly permissive/protective parents are what ultimately make the majority of dumb kids…parents are the first and primary teachers of children…
I may not have seen my dad till i was 12 (cause he worked alot), but I knew he was only a ’swat in the back of the head’ away…I credit my mom and dad and millions of other moms and dads for good old fashioned…’I'll put my foot in your ass if you don’t turn off that X and do your homework’…interventions, and quotes like…’really if those same kids said to jump off a bridge would you’… and a classic…’do you want to gum your food, keep it up’…and for my ‘F’ in conduct, I got the following …’I don’t sign Fs, maybe your mother will sign it’ and threw the report card in my face… the themes are not new, the technology is the changing form most of the rules of engagement are the same. You are not their ‘friend’ you are their ‘parent’ you may be friends, but not during this critical path period of their lives….
Parenting, while difficult and challenging most of the time…its the one gig where failure is an option cause that’s where the learning lives…
So if you are a parent and reading this…relax you’re most likely not an idiot, just tell your 8-18yr old media immersed child that there are limits and consequences for going past those limits…and then follow-thru…and beat the hell out of them…half kidding…try and look a few steps past your own reactions and see what the situation looks like. Accept what is, and in that you might find the right mix of disciplined ‘beat the hell out of them’ action.
Oh and if you decide to thumb through that preso, it smells funny. Like curdled milk…like a policy flack would write. One man’s opinion, what the hell do I know…
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/mh012010pkg.cfm << look where it was presented and by whom.