This does not mean the Institute’s thought-provoking work, research and advocacy will be ending. We’re already engaged in discussions with both national and local non-profits interested in carrying on our programs, including Say Yes To No ®, Switch ® and through-u ®.  I am very confident that our programs’ new homes will continue to educate parents and caregivers.

I feel honored to have had the privilege of leading an organization that has accomplished so much during the past thirteen years.  One of the core questions guiding the Institute’s work and mission has been, “what sort of future do we want for our kids?”  We’ve been privileged to engage parents, teachers, doctors, coaches, and other caring adults in the important work of answering this question.  We’ve met many of you in living rooms, school auditoriums, board rooms, press rooms, in the halls of Congress, places of worship, and coffee shops to explore the powerful role of digital technologies in children’s lives today – and to give shape and voice to a future where families have the tools they need to navigate this new digital world successfully.

Thank you for partnering with us to make these compelling visions of the future a reality.  We’ve accomplished a lot of amazing things in the last thirteen years.  And in that same amount of time there has been unprecedented technological innovation and an ever-increasing number of screens in young people’s lives, making the Institute’s mission just as relevant today as when we started.  So while this chapter of the Institute’s work is coming to a close, I am excited to transition the Institute’s programs to organizations that will continue to foster the same important conversations and bring relevant solutions to parents.  I will keep you posted as these conversations evolve.

As for myself, retirement is not in my vocabulary.  I will continue to speak and write on topics related to parenting in the 21st century.  I am very grateful for your support which has enabled us to accomplish so much for children and families throughout the years.  I look forward to continuing that work with you.

Sincerely,

David Walsh, Ph.D.
Founder
National Institute on Media and the Family

I listened to a webinar put on by YPulse last week – Ypulse is a youth marketing and research organization and their web site flashes ads with things like “Connecting Brands with Youth”. Now, I have to add my disclaimer here that I don’t like the idea of marketing directly to Teens and Tweens. I think their lives are tricky enough, navigating school, friends and developing into good adults and all. Making them feel like they need more stuff and specifically “my cool stuff” gives me the heebie-jeebies.

But companies in the US do market to tweens and teens, because combined they are a $140 Billion dollar industry, and they influence another $370 Billion in spending (read: make their parents buy stuff). Wow, that’s a lot of money.

So I listened to learn what companies know about my kids that I don’t. I took ten pages of notes during this webinar and I’ll probably end up writing a series of posts.

Here at the National Institute on Media and the Family, Dr. Dave Walsh talks about kids living in the media generation of “More, Easy, Fast and Fun” – today I want to talk about the Fast.

At one point in the webinar the speaker said, “Teens want immediacy, instant gratification so online buying is hard for them. It takes too long.” I got a little shivery feeling, when I was a kid, I had to wait, usually until my birthday or Christmas to get anything and my kids can’t even tolerate shipping time?

• 85% of teens have a cell phone and using instant text messages to reach friends,
• anywhere, anytime, a majority of kids watch favorite shows online, whenever they want to watch,
• Internet brings any piece of information and friends to them right now and 99% of teens use social networking sites to interact with friends.

Almost anything is available at the click of their fingers. Is it any wonder that FAST has taken root like creeping Charlie out in your yard?

So why not Fast?

Too much Fast gets in the way of kids learning about patience, waiting, longing, hard work that pays off later – these are critical attributes to living a successful life. Relationships, jobs, even school depend on these things. All this Fast radically changes parenting, if you ask me. So what can we do to counteract it?

• Slow down, even just a little.
• Try to think of one thing that you and your family can set a goal toward and anticipate.  Maybe it’s saving the money for a trip you take a year from now.  Maybe it’s waiting until a birthday to buy that new video game.
• Take the time to really map out a school project with your child, one that isn’t due for awhile, with the steps for getting it done over time.

Ok, one more thing about YPulse. They also do some interesting work about what motivates youth to engage in social causes and that’s important. We’d love to hear some of your ideas for building patience and waiting in our Fast culture. Why don’t you share one?

A number of years ago, she and her husband consciously built a rule around screens because they didn’t want their children’s family hang-out time to center around evening screens, like they felt their childhood had. You know that “lets watch our favorite show after supper” routine.

So they created No Screen Prime Time from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.- and they did other things together like games, homework, and reading. No screens, — not TV, not computer, not cell phone- NONE! And that was for the parents, too, and not even research for homework gets a waiver, so plan ahead!! So, I explored a little. The definition of Prime includes: one of the most important, and of the greatest relevance or significance. So the question I am grappling with today is: do I ever want to call anything on a screen my family’s Prime Time?

I don’t, so my challenge to you is this: Claim your Prime Time! Decide what it is that deserves your family’s most important and significant time. For a lot of families, the time after supper is the only time in a day that you’re all together- so whats your Prime Time? Maybe its a movie or show, but maybe– on some days it’s not!

I think tonight, I’m going to suggest a game of Bannanagrams (and if you haven’t ever played it, I highly recommend it), and you can even buy it on Amazon through the National Institute on Media and the Family’s website and you’ll make a small gift to the Institute, too, if you order through this link!

http://www.mediafamily.org/store/shop_and_support.shtml

Hey, why don’t you share some of your favorite Prime Time activities with us and post a comment!

Jenny Buck

About the author: Jenny Buck is the Development Director at the National Institute on Media and the Family and parent of 2 teenage sons.

Or do you ever feel like your child goes off to school or a play date and returns home seeming to have received some expert technical training on “how to manipulate my parents” from their friends or who knows who else?

Access to information – and being bombarded by marketing messages – abounds, both in our lives and in our children’s lives and it’s more important than ever to have a strategy for your family about what’s really important to you.

One of my co-workers has an interesting strategy that helps diffuse a situation when one of her children comes at her with a request or desire that needs to be dealt with.  When her kids were little she and her husband crafted the Buck Family Constitution.  When someone wants or needs something, they go back to that Constitution to gain a little perspective and a little value about what’s important in their family.

Jenny said, “The kids were really little, maybe two and three, and we were already feeling the pressure of getting and doing more and more all the time.  We would run errands and one of the boys would inevitably fall apart because they wanted a new toy, a candy bar or time at a friend’s house.  So my husband and I spent some time really thinking about what our values are, and what we want to convey to our kids that will help them be more than consumers, but thinking, responsible people.  We wrote the Buck Family Constitution, printed it on some beautiful paper and then we each painted one of our hands and made our mark on that paper.  We framed it and it hangs right over our kitchen table where we have breakfast every morning.  It defines what kind of people we’re striving to be – and when one of us has an issue or a desire it can be a very helpful tool to refer to as we grapple together with something like “do I have to mow the lawn before I play with Kenny?”   We certainly don’t measure up to everything that’s on that Constitution every day, but it’s a good reminder about how we’re trying to live.”

Do you have any interesting principles that work for your family that you’d be willing to share with me?

He looked at his most successful students, including those in an honors math class.  What he found was that irrespective of whether they had a TV in their bedroom or not, (although most did not), these kids had parents who said “no”, put limits on their kids media use, enforced homework time and a regular bedtime, and had high expectations.  Unsuccessful kids, also irrespective of bedroom TVs, tended to spend little or no time on homework, frequently stayed up past midnight, excessively played video games, and heard “no” from parents much less frequently, if at all.  He found that many of these kids could succeed, but lacked motivation and the self-discipline needed for school success.

Now researchers could immediately poke a thousand holes in this little study, but that’s not the point.  This teacher resonated with the Say Yes to No message because of what he sees in his classroom every day:  the media culture values of More, Fast, Easy and Fun have, for many kids, overtaken the character traits of self-discipline and the ability to say “no.”   This teacher is worried not only about individual kids’ futures, but our country’s future also.

Do you have a story of how self-discipline would help your kids do better in school?

Dr. Dave

While speeding and alcohol are clearly lead factors, as I drive down the highway and streets, I can’t ignore the amount of cell phone use among young drivers.   In fact, more than half of teens reported using cell phones while driving.  Teens love their cell phones and report them essential to their social lives – keeping up with friends and activities.  And what do teens love most about their cell phones?  According to a Harris Interactive Poll, teens love to multitask.  The fact that they can text without looking at the keypad, makes multitasking so much easier, they feel.

Teachers deal with this every day in their classroom, but mixing cell phones and driving can become dangerously or even deadly very quickly.  Talk with your teen and lay clear ground rules for cell phone use.  At the top of the list should be: No talking or texting on a cell phone while driving.  Make sure your teen knows the consequence – If they break the rule: No cellphone and no car.  It’s your teen’s life at stake.

How do you regulate your driving teen’s cell phone use?

Dr. Dave

Besides giving kids time to practice social skills with their peers, active exercise actually increases brain growth and development.  Exercise releases brain chemicals in key learning and memory centers of the brain which stimulate the growth of neural networks.  At a time when we are asking our kids to perform at peak levels in their school work, we should be giving them all the tools and support to help them succeed – exercise is key.

Play and exercise are of course also key to fighting our current epidemic of overweight and obesity.  Helping kids build stronger, more active and fit bodies will only help them succeed at school.  I am heartened by the fact that I am seeing more and more families out exercising together.  Last night on a bike ride, our local bike path was as crowded as a freeway and many of the bikers were families out for a ride together and getting some good exercise to boot.   Even as simple an exercise as walking is healthy for kids.  But nothing beats kids just being able to play.  So if you have a backyard, playground, local gym, or open space – get your kids off the couch, away from the video screens and outside to move and play.

Are kids  enough “playtime” ?
What’s your kids’ favorite playtime activity?

Quoted in the release of the study, the lead researcher, Dr. Hernan Delgado states that:

“Television and movies are among the leading sources of information about sex and relationships for adolescents.  Our research shows that their sexual attitudes and expectations are influenced much earlier in life.”

The researchers found that kids who viewed adult material when they were six to eight years old were more likely to start early sexual activity when they were teens than kids who did not view such shows. In fact for every hour of adult TV or movies watched in the two sample days, their chances of early sexual activity increased by 33%.

Young children learn by copying what they see. Because their brains are still in early stages of development, children are not able to view adult shows and see them as just entertainment.  The complexity of adult human relationships is beyond what their experience has taught them.  So they will just copy the sexual activity they see without any mature understanding of relationships or love.  When they hit adolescence and the hormones start flowing, the road map to early sex is in their brains.

We adults sometimes think that younger children do not understand mature content on television or movies, so we do not screen programs as we should.  Kids don’t understand, but they will copy.

Our media is full of sexual messages and images that are inappropriate for children. Early onset of sexual activity puts a teen at high risk for pregnancy, sexual diseases and for girls, cervical cancer, along with a host of other emotional and academic problems.

Here are my three best tips for appropriate media for children:

1. Keep TVs out of your child’s bedrooms, so you can monitor content.
2. Limit media to no more than two hours a day.
3. Keep content age appropriate.

If you’d like to see more tips on media use see our Media Family’s Twelve Tips to Tame the Tube. And yes, don’t forget to talk to your child about sexuality. Give them your values and give them early or the media culture will step in and gladly give your children theirs.

What  do you say to your child about mature content?