My neice uses more media than me...

I noticed this week that I was so busy that I didn't even watch a movie, which is a big deal because we usually watch at least 2 every week. Anyway, I listened to some music online and used facebook, but nothing interesting happened with that. Anyway, my little seven year old neice watches between 1-3 hours of tv each day, and she has her music on while she gets ready each morning before school, that alone is more than I've done this week. Then I realized that she has watched a movie almost every other day and even in her van as we drove around today. This little girl is surrounded by media at every turn and I can tell it is effecting her expectations about life. She whined incessantly about having to find something to do on her own today since she had watched all the sunday movies in the house. She could not find a way to entertain herself because she is so used to being constantly bombarded with media which gives her things to do. I have also noticed how mature the material of her tv shows and music is for a seven year old girl and realized that my parents would have never let me see anything like that back in the day. If she is like this growing up in a good LDS home with "moderate" media use, what are all those American children like who watch whatever they want, whenever they want for hours upon hours? Are parent's standards slowly lowering because the "good choices" of media are gradually getting worse and thats the best they can find?

Is media fueling our country's debt habits?

On friday my hubby and I were trying to find something to watch when Father of the Bride II came on TV. I love Steve Martin and those movies. We watched the first movie right before getting married so it made us laugh to think that the trend could continue and we could get pregnant after watching this film about a mother and daughter having children at the same time and how it changed their family. This film is hilarious, but I noticed that it made me feel like I was not doing things quite right. I remember the same sort of feeling when I watched the first one and saw how glamorous the wedding was compared to my reception and then how many great things they had for their babies in the 2nd movie. Throughout both films the father pays and pays and pays for all these material things and it makes you think that its no big deal to get into debt or to make unwise financial decisions. Although they are stereotypical, I could see how movies like this could create an image of the perfect American Family that the viewers might try to emulate and therefore get into debt.

some model show

So, I have never really been a big TV person, I have just never found time to let myself get hooked on TV series so instead I just watch movies and listen to music every once in awhile. Anyway, the place where my husband and I are living right now has a work out room so i decided to view some media while i ran on the tread mill. This model show, I believe it was project runway or something came on and it was hilarious to watch. All the girls were extremely thin and they all had cliques and were catty like girls in junior high or something. It was saturated with the typical woman our society conveys in the media. I also found some of the commercials very interesting. There was one for a scary murder show about college sorority girls and it really did get my adrenaline going which helped me run faster like we talked about with the "excitation transfer theory". This station was definitely geared at women and teenage girls because the content of the show and the commercials were all very feminine and materialistic and worldly.