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Coping With Media: What Will You Allow?

© Terrie Lynn Bittner

Hopefully, you have been teaching your teens values since they were very small. If not, it's time to start. If you have been teacihng them all along, you need to reinforce them often. As teens face new challenges and start making their own decisions, they constantly need the values re-interpreted to fit new situations.

If you are using the family nights introduced in the last article, this is a good place to start. The following is a simple demonstration you can do for your teens to help them understand why they should monitor what they see and hear, particularly from the media.

Offer your teens an icy cold glass of water, packaged as attractively as you can manage-perhaps in a pretty glass with a lemon wedge added on. Does this look appealing? Just before they start to take a drink, tell them you want to add a little something extra. Dump in a clump of dirt and give it back to them. It doesn't seem as appealing anymore, does it? When they reject the glass, offer to get rid of the dirt. Pour the water through a strainer and remove as much dirt as possible. Would they like to drink it now? Point out that it is very hard to get filth out of water once it has been added.

It is even harder to get filth out of your mind once it has been added. The filthy water is far less appealing to anyone with quality and good taste. Only a desperate person is willing to drink of dirty water. If your teens choose to take filth into their minds and hearts, their appeal will diminish equally to people of quality. They might tell themselves they are just experimenting, and then they will stop. They might stop, but what their experiment taught them will remain in their minds and continue to influence their thoughts and actions.

A theoretical lesson should always be followed up by a practical one. This is the time to set goals and standards for your family. Do you have rules about what television programs, movies and music can be experienced? If not, it's time to decide. You might say a child must be fourteen to view a PG-13 movie, and then only with a reliable review that explains why the movie was rated PG or PG-13. What aspects of the ratings will you allow? How old must they be to see nudity? Implied sex? Bad language? Violence? If you make the guidelines clear, you won't have to argue every movie or every piece of music. As was discussed in the article on making rules, teens should be able to evaluate every piece of media for themselves and simply know not only whether or not it is acceptable, but why. When they internalize the rule and avoid bad media because they don't want to expose themselves to it, you know you have succeeded.