YouTube tops kids' list of favorite brands!

Most parents will tell you that kids LOVE YouTube. In a historic first, YouTube has been out such iconic and beloved kids brands as Disney and Oreo for the top spot in a recent study looking at kids' favorite brands.

YouTube is no longer considered the "wild wild west" by many parents.  However, what concerns should we have about kids' exposure??  You can find just about anything on youtube. For example, my then 7 year old daughter discovered that people post entire hours long videos of themselves giving birth!

Here's the article with the rest of the list:

The dangers of look-alike "Smart Snacks."

The nutritional value of school lunches has been a hot topic for a number of years. Schools have been under increasing pressure to provide healthy and nourishing lunch options, as they should. Kids learn better when they are getting the nutrition they need.

Unfortunately, some of the offerings are still "light" on nutrition. For example, some brands such as Cheetos and Doritos have reformulated their products to meet requirements for "smart snacks" put forth by the USDA. This allows them to market these products to kids in schools.

Setting aside the questionable nutritional value of Doritos (which I love, don't get me wrong), another problem is that the original package and the "smart snacks" package looks very similar.

This could lead to confusion among parents and children when they are inevitably pestered to "please can we buy some cheetos" at the grocery store.

Here's a recent article out of UConn (Huskies!) on this topic:

If your teen rejects social media, are they missing out?

Statistics suggest that most kids between 13 and 19 spend time online and many of them use social networking sites such as Snapchat and Instagram.

But, what if you have a child that doesn't want any part of social media? Or what if you forbid it? Are they missing out? Will they miss important social opportunities, leading to weakened social relationships?

Here's an article addressing that question. What do you think?

Digital Heroin?

Is digital media the same as heroin?

A recent article in the New York Post claims that digital media are like heroin for our children's brains. While I would certainly argue for reasonable time limits and age appropriate content, this bit of hyperbole is not moving us forward in our understanding of children and media in today's constant screen world. 

Here's a link to the article: 

Stereotypical Coverage of Female Athletes

Olympic Media and Gendered Coverage of Athletes

 The way that the media talk about female athletes has been the subject of controversy for some time. This issue was really propelled into the spotlight this year during the 2016 summer Olympic games in Rio.  

Here are some examples:

Here's a headline for you: 

Corey Cogdell, wife of Bears lineman Mitch Unrein, wins bronze in Rio

This is just a small sample of gendered coverage. Here are some articles:

Dear Olympic Media: Do Better by Female Athletes:

Sexist Media Coverage Focuses on Women's Husbands, instead of their Accomplishments

The Most Sexist Moments at The Olympics in Ten Tweets

Screen-time rule conflicts. "But my friend's mom lets us......."

When my husband was quite young he'd spend the night at a friend's house. This friend's mom would wake them in the middle of the night to watch horror movies that would come on HBO. These are likely shows that my mother and father  in law would not have been okay with their young son watching.

This begs an interesting question: what happens when your family rules about media conflict with the rules in other places where your children spend time? Do you expect your children to follow your media rules even when out of the house? If so, how to you enforce that? What happens as your children get older and spend more and more time with their peers?  It's also worth noting that today's infinitely portable media make this even more challenging.

Here's an interesting article on this:

Virtual Torture: Fun and Games?

Video games are capable of eliciting a wide range of emotional reactions from players. We can experience sadness, fear and yes, even guilt. This article reflects on some of the more extreme examples of violent behavior to be found in video games: torture.  The picture above is from the well known torture scene in "Grand Theft Auto V."  One argument could be that this type of violence desensitizes viewers to extreme violence or that it encourages players to morally disengage. Another argument, made in this article, is that it may actually have pro social value to players.

Read the article and let me know what you think!