The Healthy Media Diet - No More No TV Weeks

I wanted to write about “No TV Week”. We do a lot of that in my district. We have for years. It is that time of year again. Last year I attended a PTO talk by a parent/grad student who was doing some research in the effect of TV and other images on behavior. At the level of the “Principal’s Coffee Hour” type talk it was fairly light. And in some senses it ended up being a “preaching to the choir” type talk. The group that gathered were limiting TV time and it kind of became a parental one-upmanship to declare how much you were limiting your kids and how many classic pieces of literature they had read. It was not my show. I was just being there to help with the set up and make sure the technology worked for the parent/guest speaker.

Toward the end I offered a few timid comments that it really was not TV, it was all the media that the children could access these days. I even offered that perhaps in contrast to the parents who were declaring to the choir that they had a 8 inch black & white TV’s that only get turned on during an eclipse that TiVO style services where you can pick and choose the content, the time you want to see things and when you want to consume it might be a good thing. Silence and cold stares.

I have thought a lot about that over the year and more as we have come up on that season again. I am pleased to say that in that school the theme is switched from “No TV Week” to “Fitness Week” which I think does a good job of switching a negative denial type focus to a positive focus.

What I could not articulate to that group of parents is that the entire media landscape is caving in. It is no longer the villain “boob tube”. It is the boob computer, the boob PS2, the boob gameboy, the boob iPod, the boob Internet radio, the IM’s, the Direct TV’s the expansion of cable delivered choices, the home delivery of Blockbuster and Netfix, Apple TV and on, and on.

We in CT are concerned about childhood obesity and healthy child life styles. We have a state initiative called No Child Left Inside. I wonder if we in school should sponsor a “No Fast Food” or a “No Refined Sugar” week. That wouldn’t work, because kids would substitute and cheat (like my daughter who gave up chocolate for Lent and so had to get coffee ice cream because that was not in violation of her promise to herself and God.). I think that parents would rightly stop and say – why are we denying a certain type of food for a week? What good will that do? Isn’t the idea to provide a healthy diet with healthy choices all the time? Sure you can have candy, just in moderation and at the correct time. You should eat a healthy breakfast to start and sustain you through the day. You should have adequate veggies, but a bag of chips is OK once in a while.

Is it not the same with media? Is it not case of creating a healthy media diet? Are the choices these days so rich and varied, is the ability to time shift and consume it on your terms the same as making good choices about choosing food? If you are going to sit in front of the refrigerator and pig out, you will get a certain result. If you make good choices about what, where, how, and how much you consume you will get another. Can we get to the point as teachers and parents to see that information is information, no matter what the medium of delivery. That words on paper are valuable, but that a short film is just as important. The media can contribute to the power, clarity and impact of the message. Which is better, reading the text of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” or listening to him say it, or watching him deliver it?

So for me, maybe there should no longer be “No TV Weeks” there should be “Creating a Healthy Media Diet Week”, where we explore the ever expanding media delivery choices and ways to make balanced and healthy media choices that fit into a balanced life style of working and playing.