The TV Rating System: Is it all it's cracked up to be?


© Nicholas Bittner

(Note: This article is intended for parents and I discourage smaller kids from reading it.)

One of the main problems with television these days is the amount of immoral content in shows. You can hardly even watch the Magic School Bus these days without running into a crude commercial. Parents across the country are begging the government to ban immoral things from the commercials in preschool age shows. And, while the government is trying to work out a solution to stop it, the best they can do is add a rating system to shows. The only problem is, the ratings aren't very accurate.

An example is the Batman Superman Adventures. As I mentioned in a previous article, it was extremely violent, and the clothes were immodest. The TV rating is Y7, and that's saying any kid seven or up can watch it. I, however, would not want my seven year old watching girls running around in skimpy clothes, while the super heroes and bad guys try to blow each other into tiny dripping chunks. With the Batman part alone, the bad guys are running around with rifles and pistols shooting people! Would you want your kid seeing and imitating that? Some parents don't realize that little kids emulate those super heroes.

The rating system is just as bad or worse with adult shows. A lot of prime time shows that are rated TV14 deal with nudity, drugs, violence, and teen drinking. Is that the kind of message we want to give teenagers? Because like little kids, whatever teens think is cool, or whatever their friends do, they usually do it too. I know that when I went part-time to fifth grade, almost all the kids at the time were swearing and seeing rated "R" and rated "PG13" movies. This isn't all because of the rating system itself. It is partially because the rating is only on for about fifteen seconds in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Because of that, if you miss the opening, then you really don't know what it's rated or about, and most parents don't stick around to find out.

Another part is that the parents don't ask about what their kids are watching. A lot of times the kids just turn on the TV, see something interesting, and watch it. They don't realize that they shouldn't be watching those types of things because their parents never told them they shouldn't.

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages

1.   Aug 23, 2000 5:06 PM
one question I have is, why do you think violence in a carton which isn't real is so bad??? it doesn't teach kids how to shoot guns or anything like that. ...

-- posted by TrowaBarton22





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