The Never-Ending Battle for Truth, Justice, and the TV Remote

When it comes to television, my grandkids seem to have different tastes from mine.

We don’t watch much TV at our house when the grandkids are around. I know that may sound strange coming from someone who grew up in the television age and eventually made it his career. Make no mistake, I like television. I appreciate how it can be an excellent tool for entertainment and education. But when it comes to children’s TV there are a lot of programs making noise but not saying much.

Many will think I am an old fuddy-duddy (and my use of the words “fuddy-duddy” probably proves it), but I contend that much of today’s children’s TV is inferior to what I watched when I was a kid. I’m not talking about production values. On the contrary, today’s technology is so advanced that it makes programs infinitely more watchable. But computer graphics, detailed set design and high-definition video can mask poor scripting, careless plot development or amateurish acting. Granted, there was no Pulitzer-winning prose in the scripts for Superman, Captain Kangaroo, The Lone Ranger or Fury (“the story of a horse and the boy who loves him.”) But at least the shows’ producers seemed to want to impart something positive and helpful in the story lines most of the time.

There are still children’s programs that do that today. There’s a sweet animated series I like to watch with my grandkids called Masha and the Bear, celebrating the unlikely friendship between some comical wild animals and the cartoon’s tiny lovable heroine. Though more infantile, Paw Patrol teaches bravery, respect and goodwill toward others. Another animated program is the good old standby Arthur, which puts its characters in real-life and often humorous situations that encourage positive decision-making. But woe to the grandparent that, like me, stumbles upon something else while his grandkids are in the room. As I was looking for something to watch with them on YouTube, my three little ones were mysteriously drawn to a non-professional video which seemed to have no purpose other than to collect monetization for its creator’s online channel. It consisted solely of the over-time-top ramblings of a video game addict named Preston while he played Minecraft. That’s right, my grandkids sat mesmerized, not playing computer games; but watching videos of someone else playing computer games. 

After tearing them away from that absurdity, we found some videos created by two business-savvy parents featuring their two adorable daughters named Addy and Maya. At first, the videos seemed harmless, until I began to analyze what the kids and I were watching. I realized that the questionably-conceived and cheesily-acted stories all seemed to convey, at least to me, the same superficial message: The more toys you have, the happier you are. Later I read the story of this YouTube family and how they turned their simple cottage industry into a lucrative commercial enterprise, earning so much money that they should be able to afford lifetime acting lessons for them and their entire zip code. Alas, from what I have seen, that money goes instead toward more toys. I’m not opposed to capitalism, but I believe my grandchildren’s time is better utilized learning something that may actually improve the quality of their lives. Thus, I have drawn a line in the small-screen sand and have started to more closely monitor the few programs they watch when visiting.

Of course when I do that I hear protests. They claim, “Mommy and Daddy always let us watch that show.” (Translation: “We saw it once, and then Mommy and Daddy told the babysitter never to let us watch it again.”) Sorry kids, I’m onto you; I wasn’t born yesterday. 

Actually, I was born yesterday—enough yesterdays to have seen the difference in my own kids years ago when they watched programs such as Sesame Street and The Magic School Bus vs. the times they watched Pokémon or Ren & Stimpy (two shows I suspect actually killed brain cells). I also have had several years to learn the “universal kids language.” Example: “Why not?” means “I don’t care how many good reasons you give me, I’ll still continue to ask ‘why not?’” (“You’re mean!” and “That’s not fair!” have the same translation.) This is standard kid vernacular whether we’re choosing TV programs, discussing bed times, or debating whether there should be limits on ice cream consumption. 

My grandkids weren’t born yesterday either. So it’s not surprising that I get pushback when we watch a show that they know bears the label of educational. “Education is for school, not TV!” says my oldest granddaughter, thinking she’s proclaimed an irrefutable truth. But once she and her siblings finally settle into one of those informative programs, I see how they react— laughing and totally engaged in the characters and action. And more than once, we’ve had conversations later about what they liked and what they learned in the shows. 

So for all these reasons, I’m standing my ground. I still hold the remote in my house, and I’ll use it, whenever possible, for the positive and constructive enrichment of my grandchildren. I feel I owe it to them and to the real world they’re growing up in. When they visit, I’ll continue to pick the programs they watch on my TV. 

While we all stay up past their bedtimes and consume gigantic bowls of ice cream.

© Nick Walker 2020  

Note: The opinions expressed above are solely for the purposes of consumer review.