What The Kids Are Watching

Every human being is entitled to four basic rights: the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to excessive battles over the television set. In a house of seven people, and only two TV sets, I have had to tap deep into my most primal instincts when it comes to television survival. Because my younger siblings outnumber me about four-to-one, I have remained in a never ending vortex of children’s shows, even as my friends began to move on from Nickelodeon to VH1. This exposure to the children’s shows of the past and today’s more modern equivalents has caused me to notice a dramatic change in the world of children’s programming.

As young teenagers, many of my contemporaries and I were exposed to what would become the first waves of the “pre-teen” movement in the entertainment industry. Prior to this, we were seemingly pigeonholed into the extremes, flipping channels between Blue’s Clues and MTV Hits. It was not until the likes of shows such as Lizzie Maguire and Boy Meets World that we were introduced to a type of show that was at once more mature than the slow-paced programs of childhood, and less graphic than the adult shows of the time. From this breed of children’s programming came the phenomenon of pre-teen based shows like Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, and more recently, the High School Musical craze. Finally, the children who were at that awkward stage between childhood and adulthood had something to watch that covered tough issues like peer pressure, smoking, and romantic relationships, without being inappropriate. The entertainment industry had struck gold, but this wave of success has led to the elimination of programming for the younger age group, and therein lies the issue.

In my own home, the effects of this pre-teen movement are quite apparent. I have witnessed my six-year-old brother switch from Dora the Explorer to Seventh Heaven in what seems like overnight. Though inevitable, this switch from the infantile to the mature is one that is meant to occur during the transitive period of the early teen years, not during kindergarten. Parents must consider that informing their children about the challenges they will face as they grow up is an important conversation to have, but it is unnecessary and unwarranted to do so at such a young age. However, many of these shows raise questions that do not and should not concern the small children who watch them. In almost every episode of Nickelodeon’s sitcom Drake and Josh, young viewers are shown the character of Drake, a rakish heartthrob who is girl-obsessed and is seen kissing and dating many different girls in the course of one episode. My young cousin who watches the show ever refers to Drake as her “crush.” It is rare to find such young children thinking in romantic terms, which are prompted by this representation of Drake as a blatant object of affection, rather than an ordinary character who happens to be a boy.

Another means of exploitation with the children’s programming industry lies in its film audience. For my brother’s tenth birthday, I took him to see the movie Robots and was surprised by how clever and poignant it turned out to be. I was even further surprised when I discovered that my brother had found it “boring.” Upon a second viewing, I realized that much of what I had found enjoyable about the movie were the many jokes and innuendos aimed at a much older audience than that of my younger brother. Much of the childish humor from children’s movies have been eliminated and replaced with subtle, adult oriented jokes, and regurgitated under the guise of a children’s film. The industry has given children a reason to want to see these movies, and parents a reason to want to take their children to see them. This promotes further confusion and ambiguity about what is and is not appropriate for the children who fall into the age group between toddlers and pre-teens.

In the short amount of time between my childhood and that of my brothers and sister’s childhood, the whole industry had changed and the change was not necessarily for the better. The entertainment industry must re-evaluate children’s programs to make them more consistent with their targeted age groups. The failure to do this could result in a loss of innocence and a desensitization to mature and important issues starting from a young age. The introduction of the pre-teen show is one that is beneficial for that age group, but should not be geared at children younger than the pre-teen age. I believe that a compromise could be reached by the industry that satisfies children’s interests with their social and emotional development. Parents have a responsibility to monitor what their children see on TV and in the movies and if these steps are taken, being concerned about what the kids are watching could become a thing of the past.