Healthy Viewing Choices

It wouldn't be wrong in saying that the mushroom growth of media in the last decade has left us with an important question of how can we have the healthy viewing choices for  whole family, particularly when it has the tremendous liberty, lot of audience and 24 hours seven days screen presence in majority of the bedrooms in Pakistan. I believe screen time for public is like chocolate. It’s delicious, pleasure in small portions, but eating too much can lead to a lifetime of bad habits.

 Although there's no single recipe for producing a successful program that could be valuable to the whole family yet with the inclusion of certain fundamentals we can easily have a high quality television contents for the entire family.

As for as prohibition on media and parental control is concerned, it is impossible to fulfill this in the atmosphere we live in. No one can stop the child or adult from accessing the media, as it is always open and available worldwide. Prohibiting or preventing someone from accessing the media can always induce an element of curiosity and inclination towards it with increased zeal.

I grew up as a media studies student hearing ‘seeing is the believing’, true I believe!  People have the natural inclinations for imitating what they see and hear in spite of whether the activities are worth Repeating or not. Repetition is a big part of how they learn, irrespective to their age. Kids learn positive competiveness when they see peers being rewarded for their good grades and good manners in trivial chores to complexity of life. Adult refrain of bad habit when they see the explicit destruction at the end. Entertainment Programs and reality shows can be filled with lots of activities worth copying.  So an ideal program must have stuff like explorations of best way to spend a life, social good, valuing high the protagonist, humanity and justice that one can pursue when the TV is off. Apart of psychological depression, Glamour glitz, extravaganza and lavish living standard is followed by frustration among people who believe Television as a magic box for a solitary amusement in their leisure. In order to achieve the same luxurious life as shown on TV, deprived people develop cathartic attitude towards them through crimes and corruption, the things which are unintentional on a part of media.

Man is said to be the social animal, he experiences strong emotions, including frustration, jealousy and anger. Help them manage these feelings by introducing them to characters who express their feelings using their words rather than their fists. Happy endings are the perfect execution to epitomize a constructive way of conflict resolution in everyday life.

People develop an awareness of gender differences during their teenage years and practice them for the rest of their lives. Gender biasness, male chauvinism and feminism are the popular situational blames our society is generally accused of.  Media need to particularly avoid programs that suggest an activity is "just for boys" or "just for girls." Kids programs, cartoons and animation series are of utmost important in this regard. Cartoon programs can help a lot by giving an equal voice even if the characters are animals, like the dog, cat, lion etc. it will send the message right from the beginning to the child mind that both girls and boys are capable and strong. They also can help in eliminating the misconception of odd occupations by showing children that girls and boys have many choices ranging from choosing a job to expressing powerful feelings.

The best attribute of literature as a medium is its richness in illustrating positive Social Models. Selflessness and sharing doesn't come naturally, it needs to be learnt and reinforced time and again. Borrowing this attribute, a family channels should elaborate in contents the importance of self-esteem and good relations with others. Watching programs which features a Strong Male  and Female Characters of an internally displaced, drone struck or a traumatized person finding his way back to the life through a new world of friendships can highlight what is good about cooperating with those nearby. Similarly inclusion of different age group characters in a cast like grandparents, aunts, uncles, teenagers and preschoolers can help children and realize parents see how people of different ages are important to one another. It will help us strengthening the family bonds and bridging the Generation Gaps.