Are Lil Wayne, Zombies and Minecraft Raising Your Children?

When posed with this question, I imagine that most parents would respond that they are in fact “raising their children, thank you very much.” As a parent of a ten year old daughter, I like to think that my co-parent and I are the prime influencers in her life. But the reality is that today’s kids are growing up so differently than we as parents may not be fully aware of how modern entertainment options affect our children’s lives.

Born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies, today’s children are digital natives, averaging 7 hours per day on screens. To put that in context, 7 hours per day is more time than most kids spend at school, doing homework and in conversation with their parents combined.

What I find really disturbing is that Black and Latino kids are on screens an average of almost 10 hours per day. I find it hard to believe, and even harder to accept. I assume it means that the television is always on in their homes, they go to sleep with television on, and spend a lot of time texting. What a life!

Which leads me to the notion that many of today’s children are being raised by gangster rap, zombies and hyper-violent video games. Most of what kids are exposed to on screens is vapid if not violent, degrading to women or glorifying consumption and other addictions. This wouldn’t be such an issue for me if the world didn’t have so many problems that are often presented as acceptable if not desirable in pop culture.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that watching violence necessarily leads to violent behavior. But it certainly desensitizes viewers to violence and reduces the extent to which they might associate consequences with violence. I also believe it certainly has the possibility of pushing some people over the edge. Some neurologists believe that everything we are exposed to rewires our brains. If they are right, what might the uber-violent video games like Call of Duty or misogynist songs like “I’ve Got Hoes in Every Area Code” do to our children’s brains? What if they are hearing it all the time on the radio, learning the words, singing it in the shower and in the car, etc.. New research from Iowa State, for example, demonstrates a link between video games and youth violence and delinquency.

A question I often ponder is what if pop culture reflected the world we want our grandchildren to inherit.

I think parents need to wake up the possibility that Lil Wayne, Zombies and Minecraft may not be the best mentors for their children. They will also need to come to the realization that they may not be able to limit their kids access to pop culture, so they need to do everything they can so that their children are likely to make effective choices on how they focus their attention. This of course presumes that that their children have a lot of attractive entertainment alternatives that promote the healthy development of today’s children.

If you were to account for all the time your child spent on screens, how much total screen time do you think they average per day and to what extent are you satisfied with what they are experiencing?

Dave Room is a creator of ’Pacha’s Pajamas,’ co-founder and CEO of BALANCE Edutainment, and coordinator of Heal Our World, Heal Ourselves – a campaign that calls for more transformational children’s entertainment. But his most important identifier is Melia’s Papa.