As a society in general, we have put to much blame on our television sets for things that ourselves, and our children do.
I. We seem to try and take the blame of actions that we ourselves are creating and put the blame on our television sets.
A. "Pinnell is concerned that despite its strong system of self-regulation, advertising still gets the blame for a lot of society's ills." (Simms, 2004, p.20).
1. Recently a neighborhood friend, whose child hit the other child, claimed that they got it from a cartoon they had recently watched.
2. After a rash of school shootings people were looking to go after the video game world for making violence seem fun.
B. Program and commercial regulations are strict, and our TVs make it easy for us to see age restrictions on our programs and to even put blocks on channels that we feel are necessary but our advertisements are a different story.
1. "Ads must comply with the self-regulatory Committee of Advertising Practice code of AdvertisingÂ….. which is enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)." (Simms, 2004, p.21).
2. The main reason the ASA is so strict is that though our programs have age ratings and a system for it advertisements can come on almost any channel.
II. At what age should we allow our kids to freely watch things unmonitored and are we in essence putting their lives in the hands of the programmers and advertisers.
A. " Â…we need to recognize that advertisers have gradually broken with the old code of childhood innocence." (Cross, 2002, p. 2).
1. It seems as though we feel that children have the right to learn about products by watching advertising and deciding for themselves on which products to choose.
2. As I was at the grocery store the other evening I saw a mother and her daughter shopping and the mother might as well have been the child, reason being that the child was telling the mother which products to get and why.
3. This is a...