Christian media expert Ted Baehr says that by age 17, the average child has spent between 40,000 and 63,000 hours watching television and movies and playing video games. Parents, he says, need to be informed about what their children and their peers are watching. “That is a tremendous amount of time when you consider that they only go to church for 11,000 hours,” he says. “Forty or fifty years ago, we didn’t see what they do today [in the media]. They’ve seen 50,000 murders; children today have seen over a million sex acts – things that you wouldn’t have thought about years ago.”

(Religion Today Summaries, 11/11/03)


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According to a Jan. 6 Agape Press story, a recent study reveals that a large majority of young kids are spending a significant amount of time in front of electronic media – and experts aren’t sure what the long-term effects of that habit will be. The study, released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 68% of children age two and under spend an average of two hours a day either in front of the TV, the computer, or playing video games.

The story states, “Such obsession with electronic media has been linked by previous studies to obesity and poorer reading ability, and some groups worry that kids are negatively influenced by the violence, sexual content, and substance abuse so prevalent on TV.”

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia102803nr.cfm


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In the Nov. 14 edition of his Breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson noted that advertisers of “adult” products are increasingly targeting young people.

“A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that ‘for every million more readers ages 12 to 19, a magazine had 60 percent more advertisements for beer and distilled liquor.’

“I don’t think it’s a question of “indirectly” appealing to underage drinkers at all. I think the alcohol industry knows exactly what it’s doing – just like the cigarette industry did with its now infamous “Joe Camel” image. Problem drinkers don’t usually start in middle age. It’s when you get a kid hooked at age sixteen that you’ve got him for life. And it’s easier to get him hooked at an age when his paramount concern is to be “cool,” to fit in with everyone else. In their relentless drive for more and more profits, both the alcohol industry and the magazine industry have completely forgotten their responsibility to society and to children.”


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