If Only Parents Were as Brave as Dr Tanya
The Government’s latest guru, Dr Tanya Byron – from the BBC parenting series Little Angels – has completed a report into children’s safety in the New Media age.
By “safety” the report means not only protection from invisible online predators, but avoiding any material that may be overly aggressive or just plain inappropriate for young minds.
Of special concern are video-game classifications and uninhibited online surfing.
When it comes to games, the advice is robust.
Parents are urged not to let children play video games alone in their bedrooms but to insist they play them only in the living room or kitchen, where they can be better monitored.
What a very sensible suggestion. The few of us whose children still do not have a TV or a games console in their bedrooms can feel satisfied at Dr Tanya’s ruling. It seems to be a simple solution to a complicated problem.
A 2006 poll of 1,300 families found that seven in ten children had their own television while six in ten had a games console. Yet countless studies show that children with bedroom TVs score lower on school tests and are more likely to have sleep problems.
But those two words “insist” and “monitor” really stand out in Dr Tanya’s report.
The reason TVs and games consoles will stay in bedrooms, despite Dr Tanya’s best efforts, is clear if you’ve ever watched the excellent and addictive BBC show Honey We’re Killing The Kids: insisting on no TV in the bedroom equals sulks, door-slamming, threats to leave home and silent family dinners.
Are you brave enough to risk that?
As for monitoring – namely peering over the shoulder to watch the computer screen as an already sulky ten-year-old explores Bebo or the like – it is a terrifying prospect for so many parents.
Dr Tanya, I wish this report would make a difference but there’s absolutely no chance the majority will act on your well thought-out, well intentioned recommendations.
I can already hear the maternal opt-out cries of: “He plays Doom in his best mate’s room so what’s the point?”
Anyway, it has become more difficult to work out what is unsuitable for our offspring to watch even when we’re in the same room. In just a generation the phrase “not in front of the children” has all but died out.
Everything’s fine so long as it’s before the sanctified watershed.
On Good Friday the BBC confused and then outraged parents when a main character in EastEnders was shown being buried alive, a full hour before ‘family’ TV time officially ends.
The blurring of lines between adult-only and child-friendly entertainment caught me out too this week. I merrily sat down with my seven- and five-year-old daughters to watch Austin Powers, the spoof spy film set in the Sixties. I thought it would be silly, slapstick viewing.
In fact it was grossly inappropriate.
Now my eldest, Alex, is asking “What’s a Mojo?” and “Why do women suck chess pieces?” Dr Tanya’s research has shown that parents are most worried by predators and children are most concerned by cyber-bullying.
What we should all be concerned about is our diabolical laziness.
As a parenting nation we’re emotionally obese, cowardly and slavishly reliant on the very technology that could seriously damage a generation.
Source: Daily Mail, UK
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