AN ANYONE ESCAPE THE ASSAULT on our eyes? With a VCR in nearly every home, it appears that our culture is headed down a road on which it cannot return. Big screen TVs and DVD entertainment centers overwhelm our sensitivities and sensibilities with their larger-than-life portrayals of what is desirable. Many people, including Christians, find themselves out of control, hopelessly sucked into the current of our culture.

A Serious Problem
More than any other technological innovation of the past century, television and the video industry have affected family life and become part of the American lifestyle. For children born in the 1990s more hours will be spent watching television and videos than any other single activity except sleep.¹

Families today often plan their schedules—including meals and social activities—around the TV Guide. If they can find time, many families consider an evening with a “good” video as a form of togetherness and “family entertainment.”

But what about the children? What about the precious ones entrusted to parents by God and society? Do adults truly fail to see, or at times even ignore, some very crucial issues at stake? Can young children adequately deal with the myriad bits of cultural fanfare being thrown their way? Are we doing the right thing in giving them free access to the world of choices offered by the entertainment industry?

Research indicates that young children are likely to be influenced by videos, but not in the ways that many adults might predict. Children below the age of 8 do not understand much of what they see in this type of programming, because it is difficult for them to connect separate scenes into a meaningful story line. They don’t have the developmental skills to relate action to motives or consequences easily. In addition, fictional characters, for them, do not retain the same roles in real life.²

Some Christian families refuse to succumb to the assault of the entertainment world on their homes. They carefully guard the avenues to the minds of their children, limiting the number of hours that TV and videos are watched in the home, deciding what will be viewed, and actually monitoring such activities. They buy or rent only videos with good moral content and religious or educational value because they realize that most TV programming today contains little of lasting benefit.

But does this Christian visual “entertainment” really help children develop intellectually? Or may  well-meaning adults actually be impairing the growth of children’s creative abilities? Is there any evidence that children are affected, either negatively or positively, in their abilities to choose right from wrong, to discern spiritual issues at a deeper level?

A recent study explored how the concept of salvation develops in Adventist children and adolescents 7 to 18 years of age. As a part of this study, families were surveyed on the different ways they help their children develop spiritually in the home. Family worship and the use of religious videos ranked high on the list of commended responses. Surprisingly, however, it was discovered that the use of videos as an additional form of religious instruction in the home negatively related to six different salvation concepts. Of these salvation concepts, the role of “works” versus faith in salvation appears to have been the most severely impacted.³

Even though religious videos were used specifically for religious educational purposes by families participating in the survey, they nevertheless tended to impair the spiritual development of children in their understanding of the role faith should play in the life of a Christian.

The increased availability of religious videos has no doubt influenced parents to consider them an additional form of religious training. In some cases videos may have been used as alternative worship material, or even as a form of baby-sitting. This could lead parents to spend less time with their children and, consequently, less time communicating with their children. It would appear that too many videos—even religious ones—may impede learning and affect the child’s ability to really think about important spiritual concepts.

What Are the Options?
So what can parents do today to counterbalance the technology and the habits that threaten to devour our time, our sense of good judgment, and our God-given creative abilities? What will help our children develop balanced lives—intellectually, morally, and spiritually?

1. Avoid using videos or TV as a baby-sitter. Outline clear rules for your children that define the amount of time they may watch television and/or videos, even Christian or religious ones. Stick to the rules you have set down as a family.

2. Don’t use viewing privileges as a reward or punishment. This only causes children to focus on the attractiveness of the activity.

3. Encourage children to watch programming that is specifically child-appropriate, educationally informative, and prosocial in its intent.⁴ Resources for evaluating the appropriateness of many selections are available in Christian magazines, through parenting groups, and even on packaging materials.

4. Watch with your children. Take time to explain what is happening in the story line, and give them a chance to explain what they think is happening.

5. Give your children a “commanding voice” in making choices. If you have raised them to discern between good and evil, at an early age let them help determine what is of value (and interest), no matter how trite or simplistic the choices appear to you as an adult. Remember that your children are vulnerable developmentally. If you empower your children to equip themselves morally, they will surprise you time and again with their depth of insight about what is godly and what is not.

6. Encourage balance in viewing habits. Just as we attempt to provide our children with a nutritious diet, Christian parents will try to make certain that their children learn and grow from a variety of forms of visual education and entertainment. Nature videos or public television programming on wildlife may appeal to some children while animated Bible stories may fascinate others, even in the same family. A deep fascination with only one kind of visual programming, just as with a child’s unwise decision to eat only one kind of food, may suggest more parental involvement is needed in helping to make quality choices.

7. “Is it godly?” That’s a question I often asked my children. “If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). Does the video or program content make you, as an adult, feel a bit squeamish or uncomfortable inside? If you’re willing to admit this from the depths of your God-given sensibilities, what’s this program or video doing to the  fragile moral development of your child?

8. Don’t preach incessantly about the negatives. Instead, choose the right types of character-building story lines that can help to model a positive Christian lifestyle. Reinforce the  attractiveness of that lifestyle in your conversations with your children.

9. Evaluate with visual aids. To help your children decipher what’s good or bad about the videos or programs watched, ask them to illustrate what they saw by drawing a picture. A child’s picture is literally worth a thousand words for opening your eyes to what has occurred in the mind of your child. Or ask your children to act out the scenes that impressed them most. This may clarify the differences between what you saw and what they experienced—and how ludicrous and trite current programming in the entertainment industry has come to be!

10. Discover other activities together. If the substitutes you’ve discreetly chosen are appealing, your children will learn to crave quality family time away from the “entertainment center.” A good game around the dining room table, with popcorn and apples, can be exhilarating for children who aren’t accustomed to so much of their parents’ time and attention. And it just might revamp that essential one-on-one time you may so desperately need with your teenager. You never know until you try it—again.

New Focus
Old habits are hard to overcome. Like some physical addictions, bad viewing habits die hard and can’t usually be erased by sheer willpower or good intentions. The secret lies in replacing bad habits with good ones. With this goal, the transition will be much less painful for everyone involved. Most important, ask God to help you and your family to make these life-changing choices. He won’t leave you to struggle without finding a solution.

Whatever the cost, we as parents can adjust our focus and realign our agendas. An honest inspection of our own time in front of the tube will make us ask ourselves some relevant questions: What is really important at this moment in my life? Where will I be 100 years from now, and will my children be with me? What will be important to me then?

In that glad day when Jesus comes again, and we stand before Him with our families intact, imagine the emotions that will sweep over us. What will we say? What could we possibly say but simply, “Thank You, Lord, that those You have entrusted to us are here with us in Your presence.”

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¹ J. S. Turner and J. B. Helms, Life Span Development (Fort Worth: Hartcourt, Brace, & Co., 1995), p. 339.
² J. C. Wright et al., “Young Children’s Perception of Television Reality: Determinants and Developmental Differences,” Developmental Psychology, 30: 229-339.
³ Bradley Booth, doctoral dissertation (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University, 1996).
⁴ L. Beck, Development Through the Lifespan (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1998), pp. 258, 260.

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Bradley Booth is a professor of education and psychology at Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts.