If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie). You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant. —Professor Irving Kristol
I never really got ‘the talk’ from my parents. Sex education in school was limited to simply the biology of it all. Like most teens, I was exposed to peers bragging about their sexual conquests. Yet one of my biggest lessons about sexuality came from television, particularly an episode of the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains. After accusing their older son, Mike, of calling a sex hotline, Maggie and Jason Seaver discover that it was actually their youngest son, Ben, who made the calls. In his attempts to contextualize Ben's experiences, Jason tells his son that ‘sex is a beautiful thing, a private thing, that two people share when they love each other’. That one line stuck with me for years, and it formed the foundation for my moral perspectives on sexuality. In this case, television functioned as my moral educator, and this, it turns out, is unsurprising, given that ‘in adolescent's lives… TV may be the most important sex educator.’Footnote 1
Family centered television, however, seems to be decreasing. The ‘family hour’ in prime-time television (8–9 pm) contains, on average, four times as much sexual incidences than it did in the 1970s, with one-third of these shows containing multiple sexual references.Footnote 2 One study found that although 66% of prime-time shows contain sexual activity, only 9% contain references to sexual responsibility (e.g., contraception), sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, or abstinence. The same study revealed that most teenagers are open to the possibility of having sex at a younger age because television portrays it as a normal and expected part of adolescence. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that exposing children to a high number of sexual incidents via the media is correlated with earlier onset of sexual activity.Footnote 3
While we should certainly be concerned about the effects sexualized media is having on our children's behavior, we should also be concerned about how it is influencing their fundamental views toward sexuality; that is, sexualized media is having a profound influence on adolescents’ sexual ethics.
As is evident from my own abovementioned experience, television, like other forms of art and media, can indeed function as a moral educator. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle places great emphasis on the role of the moral tutor for guiding children in their moral development, and in his Politics and Poetics, he (as did his mentor Plato) argued that the arts importantly functioned as moral tutors. In this paper, I will present an Aristotelian analysis of the effects exposure to highly sexualized media (with an emphasis on television) can have on the moral character of children and adolescents, who are in vitally formative years when it comes to their sexuality. Particularly, I am concerned that our youth is being habituated into a kind of sexual ethic that is based on treating their sexual partners as mere means and objects to sexual pleasure, rather than as intrinsically valuable persons with whom one can uniquely share sexual experiences.
1. Aristotle and the arts as moral tutors
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a study on the moral virtues – what they are (‘…a state [of character] that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason’Footnote 4 ) and how to acquire them. A virtuous person, a good person, is defined in the same manner we define any other excellent object. We measure goodness in an object in accordance to whether it is performing its function well, its distinctive purpose or activity. A good butter knife is one that spreads butter seamlessly; a good carving knife is one that slices through meat easily. In these cases, the defining beneficial property of the good carving knife (a sharp blade) is the opposite of that of a butter knife (a dull blade). Similarly, a good human being is one who performs her function well. According to Aristotle, a human being's distinctive activity is to reason,Footnote 5 and so a good human being is one who reasons well. A key component of Aristotle's ethical philosophy is that virtue follows the mean between extremes, and reasoning well is a necessary precondition for acquiring the capacity to determine the mean in each situation. For example, the virtue of courage is the mean between cowardness and rashness, the virtue of generosity is the mean between being a spendthrift and a miser. A courageous person knows which situations call for fighting, and which calls for walking away; a generous person understands when the situation call for giving one's money or time away, and which situations call for saving that money, or taking time to oneself. A virtuous person, then, is sensitive to the salient particulars of a situation and can incorporate those particulars into her thought process in order to determine which action most satisfies the mean. When we correctly identify the mean between extremes in particular situations, we are identifying the virtues through the proper exercise of our reason. At this point we are fulfilling our function, and consequently we are on our way to becoming good human beings.
According to Aristotle, a nonvirtuous person transforms into a virtuous one through repeatedly performing virtuous actions, following the mean in every given situation (which will change given the difference in the salient particulars of the situation), until she is habituated into performing that action, at which point she will also acquire the corresponding character trait. In this way, becoming a virtuous person is akin to learning how to play a musical instrument or perfecting a craft in that one must repeatedly practice until one learns how to play that instrument well.
Virtue of character results from habit… For we learn a craft by producing the same product that we must produce when we have learned it, becoming builders, e.g., by building and harpists by playing the harp; so, also, then we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.Footnote 6
For example, if a dishonest person wishes to reform into an honest one, she achieves this by repeatedly telling the truth. At some point her character will transform – rather than simply imitating the honest person, truth-telling will emanate from her honest character. In this sense, action and character are deeply intertwined. One must consistently perform good actions in order to become a good person (morality cannot be learned simply by reading about the virtues, for example, any more than health can be acquired by simply reading medical pamphlets) and a good person can be trusted to perform good actions.Footnote 7 Becoming virtuous through habituation, however, is not a process of mindless repetition. Again, because acting according to the mean requires being sensitive to the particulars of a situation, acting virtuously will always entail reasoning through those particulars, weighing them, and determining which action is appropriate for each situation.
Being virtuous, therefore, is a complex process that cannot be exhausted by simply following a certain set of unchanging rules (as in Kantian deontology) or by some simple calculus of consequences (as in utilitarianism). As Kevin McDonough writes: ‘Aristotle is concerned not with the inculcation of rules, but with the development of a capacity for excellent moral judgment in particular cases.’Footnote 8 Because acquiring the virtues takes practice and a developed capacity for reason, Aristotle put an enormous emphasis on moral education and habituating children into the virtues as early as possible. He argues that the mind of a child is malleable, as opposed to the mind of an adult, and therefore that it is of utmost importance that moral education take place early in life and throughout adolescence.
… a state of character results from the repetition of similar activities. That is why we must perform the right activities since differences in these imply corresponding differences in the states. It is not unimportant, then, to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from our youth. On the contrary, it is very important, indeed all important.Footnote 9
Moral education is also imperative to guide the nonvirtuous on the path to virtue, for if one has never been good, how can one know how to commence the process of becoming good? It is here that the role of the moral tutor comes into play – a teacher of sorts whom the nonvirtuous imitates in order to become properly habituated. Jan Steutal and Ben Spiecker explain the role of the moral tutor as follows:
[The process of moral education requires] the supervision of the learner by one or more virtuous persons, in particular the parents or other guardians of the child. It is true that the child is not yet able to determine which action should be performed under the circumstances, or is able to do this in relatively simple or familiar situations. Nonetheless he is quite well able to act as virtue requires, given the coaching or guidance of tutors, and given, of course, that his tutors have the wisdom involved in mature moral virtuousness…. habituation, in the Aristotelian sense of the term, consists of (i) practicing the virtues or, more percisley, performing those actions that correspond with virtuous sentimental dispositions, (ii) performing such actions frequently and consistently, and (iii) doing so under the guidance or authority of a virtuous tutor.Footnote 10
Because the role of the moral tutor is vital for successful inculcation of the virtues through providing a model for imitation (‘the child sees the tutor as a model or as presenting an ideal, his affective responses to his own behavior will resemble those of his tutor’Footnote 11 ) it is important that the moral educator herself be a virtuous person, for just as virtues can be acquired through the imitation of the actions of the virtuous teacher, vices can be acquired through the imitation of the actions of nonvirtuous people. Moreover, while a moral tutor can be any person in proximity to the student (a parent, a guardian, a school teacher, or a friend) this need not be the case. Aristotle is clear that moral education can come not just through other persons, but also through exposure to the arts.
Professor Irving Kristol, in the quotation that appears at the beginning of this paper, echoes a view held by Plato – that the impact of art extends far beyond simply being a medium for entertainment. In The Republic, Plato harbors a rather abrasive attitude towards poetry because he believes it can negatively impact a person's psyche. Plato maintained that humans ought to be ruled by reason rather than emotion, and that when experiencing grief and pain a person should do his best to not display or be overcome by that grief. Exposure to poetry and plays that mirror pain and suffering provides the opportunity to be immersed in emotion rather than reason, and this increases the odds that one would be ruled by emotion in their private lives. As Socrates puts it, ‘…what we enjoy in others will inevitably react upon ourselves, for after feeding fat the emotion of pity there, it is not easy to retrain it in our own sufferings’.Footnote 12 This form of imitation extends beyond emotions: ‘Does not the same principle apply to the laughable, namely, that if in comic representations, or for that matter in private talk, you take intense pleasure in buffooneries that you would blush to practice yourself…’Footnote 13 Because philosophy champions the rule of reason over emotion, and because poetry promotes the opposite, ‘there is a long standing quarrel between poetry and philosophy’,Footnote 14 and poetry and plays should be ‘dismissed… from our city’.Footnote 15 In Plato's ideal society, the literature to which the young are exposed must be preapproved by the rulers and be conducive to their education, since stories have the capacity to ‘shape their souls’.Footnote 16
While Aristotle agreed with his teacher that the arts can serve as moral tutors, he disagreed that exposure to poetry and plays had the detrimental influence with which Plato was concerned. In his Poetics, Aristotle argues that exposure to poetry and plays, in particular tragedies, inspire emotions of fear and pity.Footnote 17 Confronting these emotions provides an opportunity, as Derek Penwell puts it, ‘not to conquer emotions but train them properly’.Footnote 18 Indeed, finding such a balance between emotion and reason ‘is necessary for virtue to exist… Being socialized emotionally is crucial to Aristotle's view of moral thinking – especially the training of the young.’Footnote 19 Steutal and Speicker also argue that cultivating a child's feelings and emotions is an integral part of moral education and, therefore, that it is the responsibility of the moral tutor to teach students how to ‘obey and listen to the rational part [of the soul], not just in the sense that feelings can be kept under control if they are contrary to the precepts of reason, but also, and more importantly, in the sense that they can be harmonised with the notice of reason by their being transformed, moulded, and reshaped.’Footnote 20 Therefore, while Plato and Aristotle disagreed on the desirability of allowing the arts to incite emotion, both maintained that exposure to the arts could indeed function to impact the moral education and character of its audience – both to its detrainment and improvement, depending on the quality and content of the media in question.
Aristotle repeatedly discusses other kinds of arts that function as moral tutors. In the Politics, he writes that music has the ‘power of forming the character’ of its students, and ‘should therefore be introduced into the education of the young’.Footnote 21 However, we must be careful concerning the kinds of music to which the young are exposed, since ‘certain methods of teaching and learning music do really have a degrading effect’.Footnote 22 Consequently, he endorses only certain kinds of music, those whose ‘modes and melodies should be employed which are expressive of character’. He particularly focuses on the Dorian scales because he believes it is ‘the gravest and manliest’ and therefore that ‘it is evident that our youth should be taught the Dorian music’.Footnote 23
Like Plato, Aristotle also argued that literature functions as a moral tutor. Aristotle writes that teachers ‘should be careful what tales or stories the children hear, for all such things are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life…’Footnote 24 As an example, McDonough appeals to Robin Hood as an instrument to teach children about social justice.
Rich stories from literature, history, and experience engage children's imagination and spirit, teaching it ways that may make vivid the evils of oppression, the nobility of honesty, justice, and respect etc. In this way, children may be led to develop strong emotional attachments to actions that are just, and a strong aversion to actions that are unjust… Complex stories can be important ways of weaving such complex moral responses into the ‘fabric’ of moral character in ways that simply, highly general rules cannot. Stories may be used to encourage children to reflect upon particular moral judgments, to take a more thoughtful approach to determining what is right in the particular case, and provide a context within which to engage in such thougtfulness.Footnote 25
Alasdair MacIntyre also writes that stories, fiction, and poetry are avenues for forming our moral character:
It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutters in their actions as in their words… the telling of stories has a key part in educating us into the virtues.Footnote 26
This is a rather brief introduction to Aristotle's theory of virtue. What is most key to emphasize for our purposes is Aristotle's focus on the integral role of the moral tutor in helping individuals, in particular the young, adopt the virtues. Without the teacher, there would be no way to guide persons from nonvirtue to virtue. Imitating the teacher repeatedly is what will ultimately inculcate the virtues into the student, at which point the student will no longer need imitation in order to act morally; virtuous actions will then flow from his virtuous character. The arts (poetry, tragedy, music, and literature, to name a few examples) can, indeed, serve as moral tutors; while a child's parents, friends, and teachers will also serve this role, the influence of the arts cannot be underestimated. In this sense, the arts should not be looked upon as simply innocuous entertainment. It is as essential, therefore, to expose children and other students of morality to the right kinds of arts – the kinds that will help instill virtues rather than vices.
2. Virtue ethics and sexualized television: Jersey Shore (and the like) as moral tutors
In 1996, the National Institute on Media and the Family conducted an experiment with a group of preschoolers, where they documented their behavior after watching an episode of the children's show Barney and then after watching an episode of Power Rangers. Immediately after watching Barney, the children played quietly and peacefully together, whereas immediately after watching Power Rangers they began playing aggressively. The study was repeated thirteen years later in 2009 with similar results; while the children used maracas as musical instruments after watching Barney, they were quick to use the maracas as weapons against each other after viewing Power Rangers. In this case, imitation was immediate after watching both television shows.Footnote 27 The effects of media violence on children has been well documented,Footnote 28 and vindicates Aristotle and Plato's concern that the young will imitate the vices to which they are exposed. The effects of sexualized television on children and teenagers, while less studied than the effects of violence, has been gaining attention.
Jersey Shore is an extremely popular television reality show, drawing in millions of viewers per season and spawning off two other reality shows on MTV, and one that is easily accessible to today's youth. It is also a show that showcases, and even champions, an extremely morally dubious sexual ethic. The show's main cast frequently engages in promiscuous sex, with the tendency to instrumentalize and reduce the opposite sex to mere objects for their pleasure. While I have deep moral reservations about promiscuity, and believe sex may be detrimental when it occurs between young people with little or no commitment to each other, my main concern here is the frequent violation of Immanuel Kant's formula of humanity (the proscription against treating persons as mere means) that occurs in Jersey Shore (and other shows like it). Women are routinely dehumanized, as if they are nothing more than sexual orifices for the men. Various terms exist that are used to denote women either by their personal appearance or their willingness to have one-night stands. For example, the term ‘grenade’ is constantly used to denote women who are perceived as unattractive (the term has been used to denote men as well, but far less so), and the term ‘grenade launcher’ describes an overweight woman. The term ‘zoo’ is used to describe a nightclub full of unattractive women, and the term ‘hyena’ has also been used in a similar manner as ‘grenade’ (which quite literally reduces women to the status of animals). These terms are used to separate these women from the ‘real women’; the perceived attractive ones who are potential sexual partners for the evening. Women who are brought home by one of the men are often referred to as ‘Bull Dogs’. When one of the men sleeps with a woman, he often refers to it as ‘pounding her out’. Similar terms are also used to denote men; the term ‘gorilla’, for example, is used to describe a particularly well-built man.
Both men and women are repeatedly showed cheating on their partners. In one episode, one of the male cast members, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, comes home to his girlfriend and initiates sex after a night of making-out with other women at nightclubs. In another episode, Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, after talking on the phone with her boyfriend, crawls into bed with one of her housemates and drunkenly asks him if he wants to ‘f**k.’ In another episode, she grabs a random man in a club (after admitting that he too was a ‘grenade’ but that she is willing to settle) and takes him home to sleep with him without knowing his name. Sexual activity is the end goal in almost every single episode of Jersey Shore – very little of which occurs between people in intimate or loving relationships (and, indeed, intimate or loving relationships are rarely featured). In one particularly telling clip, in reference to one of the women being Jewish, one of the male cast members, Paul Del Vecchio, states: ‘I don't even understand that religion or what it is, I just want to get to the business.’ When she tells him that her religion dictates that she wait until marriage to have sex, he is dismissive of her beliefs, laughing it off as a joke, and, instead, interprets it as a challenge to change her mind. Sexual partners, therefore, are not viewed as persons; there is no display of intimate and respectful relationships, and men and women exist solely as objects for sexual pleasure. Given that their sexual exploits constitute a great majority of the plotlines, these instances of dehumanization and instrumentalization occur quite often. The fact that many of the individuals voluntarily allow themselves to be instrumentalized does not alter the nature of the moral infraction. Kant made it clear that we cannot treat others, or ourselves, as mere instruments or objects.
Lara Denis argues that, despite the prevalent belief that Kant regarded sexuality as intrinsically immoral, his main concern was finding ways to satisfy our sexual desires ethically: ‘Our sexual impulse simply presents us with the challenge of finding ways to satisfy it while properly respecting ourselves and others.’Footnote 29 A healthy, respectful, view of sexuality embraces the following virtues.
A virtuous Kantian agent will be committed to morality and have the strength to act on that commitment. She will respect herself and others as rational agents. Moreover, she will recognize that how she treats her body reflects whether she values herself as a rational human being. Such an agent will see her body as an extension and a condition of her agency… Her recognition of her agency's inseparability from her body will shape her decisions about how to use her body, including how to give and receive sexual pleasure with it.Footnote 30
Humans are embodied beings. A person's body does not exist as a separate entity that is owned by the person – the body is the extension of the person; we do not own our bodies, we are our bodies. What happens to our bodies deeply effects what happens to our minds, and our sexual expression is one of the most intimate expressions of our selves. Sarah Ruddick describes sex as an occasion when ‘we “become” our bodies; our consciousness becomes bodily experience of bodily activity.’Footnote 31 Using another's body as a mere instrument for sexual pleasure entails using the person as a mere instrument for sexual pleasure.
Referencing Victor Frankl's stages of sexual maturity, Robert Van Wyk offers the following criticism of why teenage sex will typically not meet Kant's criteria of respect for persons.
The goal of sexual activity in the first stage is tension reduction. In the second stage sexual activity has an object as well as a goal, namely a partner, but a totally interchangeable partner to be used only as an object. In the third stage the partner is seen as a subject, as a human being, and not merely as an object. In the fourth stage the partner is seen as a unique human being who can be loved in his or her uniqueness. It seems to me that it is impossible, or at least highly unlikely, for someone at the first or second stage to engage in sexual intercourse without violating Kant's principle.Footnote 32
It is clear that the cast of Jersey Shore, and the many television shows that emphasize and glamorize rampant promiscuous sex, are stuck in a stage of arrested development (the second stage) when it comes to their sexual expression. Moreover, they certainly view their sexual partners as interchangeable, and therefore dispensable. Consequently, the kind of sex displayed in such television shows does not at all meet the respect for persons Kant's formula of humanity champions. What we have here are expressions of sexual vices rather than sexual virtues.
Television (and other forms of media) is a modern day Aristotelian moral tutor. Recall that, for Aristotle, actions and character are enmeshed – we gain a good (or bad) character by repeatedly doing good (or bad) things, and, once we have gained our character, we are more likely to continuously act in good (or bad) ways. Our moral tutor guides us during our formative years, and will help shape the kind of actions in which we engage. There is clear evidence that exposure to sexual activity on television is having a profound effect on adolescents’ sexual behavior. As Todd Huffman puts it:
The media have arguably become the leading sex educator in America today. And that's not particularly good news. The sexual content in much of the media today's teens attend to is frequent, glamorized, and consequence free. ‘Everyone does it’ on television and in the movies, or so it seems, yet the need for birth control, the risks of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, or the need for responsibility are rarely discussed. Too often children and teens are permitted to view late evening programming these days hypersexualized at times to the degree that many adults feel uncomfortable watching. And too often shows targeting adolescents seem like ‘Happy Days With Hormones’, with sexual intercourse appearing a normative and casual activity even for teens. In these ways the media function as a kind of sexual ‘super peer’, providing role models of attractive adults and older adolescents engaging in risky behavior, and putting additional pressure on young people to have sex at a young age.Footnote 33
One study reported that ‘76% of teenagers indicate that one reason young people have sex is because television shows and movies make it seem normal for teenagers’.Footnote 34 While television shows are quick to glamorize sex, they less often emphasize any kind of sexual responsibility or sexual morality: ‘… while more than 50% of shows – and 66% of prime-time shows – contain sexual content, only 9% contain any reference to the possible risks or responsibilities of sexual activity or any reference to contraception, protection, or safer sex.’Footnote 35 Also, ‘83% of programs popular with teens had sexual content, and 20% contained explicit or implicit intercourse. On average, each hour of programming popular with teens had 6.7 scenes that included sexual topics.’Footnote 36 As above-mentioned, another study found a direct correlation between the amounts of sexual incidences watched on television and increased early onset of sexual activity: ‘those who selectively viewed more sexual content on television were more likely to have begun having sexual intercourse in the preceding year’.Footnote 37 One particular study focused on the effects of watching MTV (a station that targets viewers in their teens and twenties and where Jersey Shore, and many other questionable television shows, are broadcast) and found that teenagers ‘with a preference for Music Television had increased amounts of sexual experience in their mid-teen years’.Footnote 38 Yet another found that ‘males who watch more television had the highest prevalence of sexual intercourse and that teens who watched television apart from their family had a rate of intercourse 3 to 6 times higher than those who viewed with their family’.Footnote 39
In what seems to be a vindication of Aristotle's emphasis on the role of the arts as educators, another study found that ‘young teenagers exposed to soap operas and talk shows tended to have beliefs consistent with what they were viewing’.Footnote 40 In terms of Aristotle's (and Plato's) argument that the young will imitate what they see portrayed in the arts, one study showed that ‘young people report that media messages are an important influence in their lives and that they receive important information about life choices from the media… the media can represent a potent source of information for teens as to what is normative behavior, and may indeed exceed the influence of an adolescent's more traditional peer group’.Footnote 41 One important finding is that ‘youths who were exposed to content portraying sexual relations outside of marriage were less likely to rate these portrayals negatively, compared with youths exposed to content portraying sexual relations within marriage or scenes of nonsexual relations’.Footnote 42 This provides evidence that children and teenager's moral beliefs may be influenced by what they see on television. If children and teenagers are constantly exposed to sexual situations where men and women view others and themselves as mere objects and instruments for sexual pleasure, this may translate into a moral perspective that such treatment is permissible, and a general ambivalence toward sex.Footnote 43 Wyk tells of a study that illustrates how teenagers are indeed adopting moral vices in regard to sexual behavior.
One recent study discovered that approximately 70 percent of older teens believed that it was morally permissible to have sexual intercourse with a woman who was too drunk to have much of an idea what she was doing. Another study discovered that 70 percent of high school boys thought there was nothing wrong with a boy lying to a girl and telling her that he was in love with her when he was not, if that would get the girl to have sexual relations with him. So obviously 70 percent of those involved in these surveys were quite willing to disregard Kant's principle of respect.Footnote 44
My goal is not to demonize one television program in particular. Though Jersey Shore is particularly morally egregious in its sexual content, it is not alone in portraying incidences and views of sexuality that deeply violate the respect for persons that should accompany all our actions. Our sexual actions are particularly sensitive because of our status as embodied persons and the effect the matters of the body can have on the mind. If we take seriously Aristotle's (and Plato's) view of the deeply influential role of the media as moral educators, then we should take seriously the kind of media to which our children are exposed. Television shows such as Jersey Shore should not be dismissed as mere entertainment for a younger audience. It, and shows like it, serve as role models that children and teenagers will imitate which, in turn, will translate into acquiring sexual vices rather than virtues, and this, too, will have consequences that ought not to be disregarded. As Susan Villani puts it: ‘The cost of ignoring the impact of the media on children and adolescents will be enormous, both in absolute dollars and in the immeasurable cost of human pain and suffering.’Footnote 45 If Aristotle and Plato are right, exposure to such media does not just influence sexual behavior (thought that, in itself, is concerning), but it seeps into the consciousness of an impressionable audience, impacting, at a fundamental level, their sexual ethic.
Conclusion
Plato advocated censorship of offending media; all morally questionable instances of poetry needed to be banished from his ideal polis. In a society such as ours, where freedom of expression is a fundamental right, I am hesitant to advocate a similar route (although that does not entail that we shouldn't have restrictions of some sort, e.g., as adopted by the 1990 Children's Television Act, which requires local broadcasters to provide children with educational television). Instead, certain buffers and educational opportunities should be established to counteract the effects sexualized media is having on our young. Media can be a positive instrument, for example ‘magazines such as Teen People and YM have produced excellent articles on such relevant topics as adolescent pregnancy and contraceptives’.Footnote 46 Since children are bombarded with media from birth, another promising route is to adopt media literacy courses in schools, as has been done in Canada and Australia and which has so far shown to be beneficial.Footnote 47
… media literacy is taught at all grade levels and throughout the curriculum, so children learn early that all media are constructed, convey a particular set of values, and, in general, are designed to sell products. The need for media literacy is beginning to gain adherents in the United States as well. For example, a number of states have included media education in their public education standards. Children who know more about how the media work, how images are constructed and the potential effects of media exposure should be less negatively affected by media use and should be more able to find what they are looking for without being ambushed by unwanted, unhealthy sexual material or by predators.Footnote 48
Finally, of course, parents and guardians can provide one of the most influential safeguards for their children. They should be attentive to the amount of television their children watch (many parents typically underestimate the number of hours per day their children watch televisionFootnote 49 ), as well as the content their children are watching. When their children are exposed to sexual incidents that portray vices, parents should discuss the content with their children because it ‘serves simultaneously as a values filter and a media educator’.Footnote 50 Victor Strasburger and Edward Donnerstein recommend a variety of other alternatives, including increasing funding for public television, increased research concerning the effects of the media on young viewers, more access to educational television, and increased regulation of advertisements (many of which are highly sexual in content).Footnote 51 , Footnote 52
Stasburger and Donnerstein also maintain that an overall change in attitude and character is required from those who are in a position of power in the media, one of decreased focus on ‘crass commercialism to one of respectful paternalism for the unique psychology and needs of young people’.Footnote 53 In his Politics, Aristotle appreciates the malleable and sensitive nature of a young mind, and consequently argues that there are certain forms of entertainment to which they should not be exposed until ‘education will have armed them against the evil influences of such representations’.Footnote 54 Aristotle's writings about the level of influence of the media are remarkably prophetic and serve as good guides to helping us appreciate what's at stake, the moral character of our children, and the ways to go about rectifying the problem. Responsible parenting and education are key.
