Are Parental Controls Enough?

[Dr. Shane]

Here is a recent article from Focus on the Family.

Remote Controls—Safety Belts Required?

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But now, if I make the mistake of leaving her alone for just a few minutes with a TV and a remote control, my innocent little baby girl would be left with a head full of images and sounds that no child was ever meant to see or hear: explicit sex, a smorgasbord of sexual deviations, nudity, profanity, unimaginable violence, brutalized bodies, medical autopsies, decomposing corpses, demons, and voyeuristic reality programs where people abuse and humiliate one another for the sake of entertainment. And that's just basic cable.

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The most effective safety measure they've developed so far is parental controls. But I've discovered that the creators of some of these shows have some pretty sneaky ways of slipping their smut in through the cracks, most often by not providing ratings. And even if these controls did effectively filter all the sleaze, there are still the commercials.

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Heck, it hasn't been that long since my daughter was having nightmares about the "Sully" character from Monsters, Inc. I can only imagine what a commercial for The Ring would do.

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So, it appears my husband and I have a choice to make: never let her watch TV unattended (not exactly a practical alternative), or have the cable disconnected.

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Maybe it's time for another milestone in our family—I think I'll call the cable company.

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Of course there is another option... isn't there?

Christian television that's tuned into you!

Get Christian TV Without Subscription Fees!

[Neil D]

There is another option which too many feel is just wrong...

Turn off the TV ....period..

by doing so, you may find that you have time to do other things, like interact with your family, share real experiences, [and not the psuedo experiences] that so may feel that they must have. Read a book, instead of TV...Who knows...you might become intelligent enough to become president of the free world....

[Bravus]

The logic of your post was working, right up until the end there... <img src="/adventist/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

But yeah, people here know how I vote on this one: for our family at least - and I know it's not the same for everyone - just not even having the machine in the house is healthiest and simplest.

[Dr. Shane]

I have so many irons in the fire, I find that I don't have enough time to watch TV. We don't have cable. All we have is SkyAngel and an FTA dish currently pointed at AMC4. Those provide such a wealth of Christian programming I find myself wishing I had more time to watch.

As it is when I get home from work I do a little work outside the house, check in here, have dinner, play with the kids, check back in here, have family worship, check back in here while running the bathwater, take a bath, read a bit and go to bed. Since my tub is just off my den, I can watch TV while taking a bath which is what I normally do.

However my kids watch more TV then they should, which is one of the reasons I make time to play with them and have family worship. The programming they watch is good. No violence, sex or bad language and most of it are charachter-building programs. But just like health food, too much of a good thing just ins't healthy.

That said, I have noticed some of the old westerns on the Hallmark channel slip past the Parental Controls.

[Dottie]

Out TV "mysteriously" stopped working about the middle of April. If my husband wants to watch one of his airplane DVD's he does it on the computer.

Last week my son was away for a couple of days and DH was on a business trip. The cord for the TV magically appeared, and I watched it for part of two evenings. It was unbelievably boring!