It's a picture that's very familiar to millions of parents of teenagers: "In the photo, the Menlo Park, Calif., high school junior sits at a desk in her bedroom with one foot propped on a computer. She's talking on the phone, writing a paper on her PC, a math book in her lap, IM-ing and e-mailing while Internet radio blares. A boombox sits at the ready, and the television is on."
That's the photo which Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman showed of his 16-year-old daughter at an event unveiling a new study of media consumption by American children and teenagers entitled "Generation M: Media in the Lives of Children." At the same event, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) aptly said: "We are conducting an experiment on this generation of children, and we have no idea what the effects will be." Later in the day, Clinton joined Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman (Conn.), Richard Durbin (Ill.), and Mary Landrieu (La.) and Republican Senators Sam Brownback (Kan.), John Ensign (Nev.), and Rick Santorum (Pa.), in reintroducing the Children and Media Research Advancement Act, legislation that would direct the National Institutes of Health to conduct a major study of the impact of media consumption on minors.
Sen. Clinton pointed out that expansion of personal media use by children had outstripped earlier efforts to give parents greater control over what their kids are exposed to. Alluding to the Clinton administration's "V-Chip" initiative focused on television content, she said: "Just a decade ago, we made great strides to keep children away from inappropriate material. But we face a complex new world. All across our country, kids today are playing increasingly violent video games while sending instant messages to friends and strangers online and listening to music they've downloaded on their I-Pods. How does a parent today who wants to protect their child from violent or explicit content have a chance?" As the V-Chip experience showed, giving parents technological tools is only part of the solution: parents need information on what content to worry about; how to effectively monitor it; and how to use the tools that are available.
The Kaiser study reinforced Clinton's argument. It found that while children are spending more and more time online, their television consumption isn't going down: "[T]hey pack 8 1/2 hours of media exposure into 6 1/2 hours each day, seven days a week," as The Washington Post summarized the findings. And the content is often disturbing. According to the study, about two-thirds of middle-school and high school-aged kids have played one of the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" video games, featuring cop-killing, prostitution, and random violence against bystanders.
Getting a scientific handle on the impact of all this media exposure is a first and urgent step. The legislation Clinton and others are proposing would set up a research program to do just that(the NIH would also be directed to examine the connection between media marketing to kids and the current epidemic of juvenile obesity). And in our view, exploring new tools for parents is the right approach to a problem that is already creating support for more drastic measures, such as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's proposal to simply ban sales of violent video games to minors.
Politically, this issue is a good example of the cultural concerns that have helped drive many voters into the arms of the GOP, which is perceived as far less likely to turn a deaf ear, even if they rarely offer concrete steps to do something practical about it. Millions of parents feel they are fighting a losing battle for influence over their children's values and habits. These are legitimate concerns. And to the extent that Democrats focus on holding powerful media corporations accountable for the real-life impact of their products and marketing on kids, it's a solidly progressive, even "populist" topic.
It's time for Democrats to join Sen. Clinton in taking this issue seriously.
