Jim Steyer is fond of referring to the media as "The Other Parent." Indeed, that's the title of his 2002 book -- and given the statistics he's accumulated, the term is as appropriate as it is alarming.
According to a University of Maryland study, American children aged 2 to 18 now spend only 17 hours a week, on average, with their parents -- "40% less time ... than kids did in the mid-'60s," a decade in which the young were presumably so busy rebelling against their parents that they couldn't bear their company. But kids now spend "more than double that amount of time -- 40 hours a week on average," Steyer says, "staring at the tube or the computer screen, listening to the radio or CDs and playing video games."
"Now, which is the parent in this picture?" Steyer asks.
Good question.
But unlike many who see the media as a disruptive, destructive force for children, Steyer is quick to insist that he "can't relate to finger-wagging moralists or fundamentalist ideologues on the topic of the media and morals.... I'm not a Christian right-winger. I'm a progressive. I teach civil rights and civil liberties at Stanford."
Thus, Steyer doesn't argue for government censorship. He wants informed, voluntary parental supervision. What he's trying to do, he says, is provide the data necessary to empower parents to make smarter choices about the media they allow their children to consume.
Toward that end, last spring he founded Common Sense Media, an independent, nonprofit organization that functions as a hybrid watchdog -- one part Consumers Union, one part American Assn. of Retired Persons, one part Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
The CommonSenseMedia.org website features reviews and recommendations on the latest movies, software, CDs and other media products and services as well as reports on studies and stories that might be useful to parents.
"We want to give parents information, kind of like the nutritional information on food, so they can decide for themselves what their kids should and shouldn't consume," Steyer says. "What's right for my 14-year-old might be very different from what's right for your 14-year-old."
Negotiating the minefield
Steyer doesn't actually have a 14-year-old. His children are 6, 9 and 10. But I have a 14-year-old, and I know just what he means.
When the movie "Gladiator" came out a few years ago, the mother of one of Lucas' friends called to ask if he would like to go with her and her son to see it that week.
