{"id":26880,"date":"2024-04-16T22:01:29","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T22:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/?p=26880"},"modified":"2025-01-11T17:38:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T23:38:37","slug":"elementor-26880","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/elementor-26880\/","title":{"rendered":"YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON TELEVISION"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you remember Nickelodeon in the 90\u2019s? There was this great sketch comedy show called, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That on Television,” starring some of the funniest Canadian teenagers and tweens telling jokes and doing skits in their natural hangouts throughout Ottawa. It was basically like \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d for kids, a precursor to \u201cAll That\u201d if you\u2019re a younger millennial. It debuted in the late 70\u2019s on Canadian broadcast TV as a sort of experimental Saturday morning show.\u202f At that point, children\u2019s television was generally educational – think \u201cMister Wizard\u201d or \u201cSesame Street.\u201d. \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That on Television\u201d was pushing boundaries by creating entertainment-only television for kids, and it was incredibly popular.\u202f It was so popular that by 1981, it had been picked up by Nickelodeon and was the highest rated show on the network in 1983.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s parents fondly remember the shows and media growing up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s parents fondly remember the shows and media growing up, even if you maybe don’t remember \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That on Television.\u201d Media is part of what shaped us as people. We\u2019d spend Friday nights in our bedroom on the cordless phone with our friends talking about what was happening on ABC\u2019s TGIF lineup, and unless our mom picked up the extension in the kitchen, she was not part of the equation. I can count on one hand how many episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch my mom watched with me, because it was zero.\u202f Parents in the 80s, 90s and even to some extent in the early 2000s were rarely involved in the media consumption of their kids.\u202f They may have told us we couldn\u2019t watch South Park, Bevis and Butthead, or Family Guy, but we did it anyway. And we all turned out fine, right?\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We all turned out fine”.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe all turned out fine.\u201d This is the siren song of every parent from every generation who is hesitant to wade into new parenting territory.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parents, I\u2019m going to tell you the fact that you know deep down in your hearts, but you maybe don\u2019t want to say out loud: media today is nothing like the media from our childhood. Our kids don\u2019t sit through two minutes of ads for toys in the middle of their shows. Their shows are <\/em>ads:\u202f 30-minute-long commercials where a kid plays with the toys for them on YouTube. Our kids aren\u2019t hearing about sex in a chaste, Corey and Topanga practicing abstinence on prom night kind of way;, they are watching Ginny lose her virginity to a clumsy teen boy she barely knows in a scene which lasts a painfully accurate one minute and nineteen seconds and leaves nothing to the imagination. Our kids have internalized ideas that run contrary to their families\u2019 belief systems before they are old enough to even articulate what those ideas are.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related Post: Play<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Overton Window<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Overton Window is a term to describe what is socially acceptable to depict in art and media, and that window has shifted dramatically in the last ten years. This is, in part, because much of what our kids watch now is not on network television like when we were kids. It’s over streaming services. Maybe this won\u2019t be a surprise to you, but the FCC does not regulate Netflix, Amazon Prime or YouTube the way it does Fox or even MTV and Comedy Central. A show rated for mature audiences cannot play on network TV in primetime, but that\u2019s not the case with Netflix. Streaming services do not use public airways and are therefore at liberty to create and enforce their own rating system as they see fit. That\u2019s right. TV-14 on NBC isn\u2019t the same as TV-14 on Netflix. In fact, \u201cGinny and Georgia,\u201d one of Netflix\u2019s most popular TV shows, is rated TV-14 and offers up that incredibly awkward 1:19 sex scene in the very first episode.\u202f The Overton Window isn\u2019t just shifting, it\u2019s darn near gone. This ain\u2019t your mama\u2019s parenting anymore.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our parents may have gotten away with knowing nothing about our favorite shows.\u202f They had the luxury of knowing that certain words, actions and even topics were off limits, or the network would receive a steep fine.\u202f That is no longer the case.\u202f The raciest episode of Friends is like Sesame Street compared to the tamest episode of your kids\u2019 Netflix favorites. What our parents used to worry about us seeing if they subscribed to HBO is being watched in our kids\u2019 bedrooms with the door shut.\u202f Goodness knows they probably stole the last of our snacks, too.\u202f Not only are they going to shove all the wrappers between the mattress and the wall, but they\u2019ll do it while consuming content we don\u2019t approve of on a device we gave them.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024 Stanford Medicine reported that the average age a child receives a cell phone is 11.6 years old, and every cell phone is a portable media device. Parents cannot afford to be on the sidelines of their kids\u2019 media consumption.\u202f It is so common for a parent to say they have never heard of Kai Cenat or Baylen Levine without ever considering that those two gents likely have more influence over our kids than even their peers. Casually saying \u201cI don\u2019t know how to navigate YouTube\u201d or \u201cIs Mr Beast still cool?\u201d is like a parent proudly announcing that they couldn\u2019t possibly be asked to name their kids\u2019 teachers.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parents, we have to get in there.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We have to be watching along with our kids and having conversations about what they see.\u202f I\u2019m not saying that we need to ban all media in our house. Far from it.\u202f We just need to know what\u2019s going on and be prepared to talk to our kids about what they are seeing.\u202f We need to be prepared to challenge the ideas that are presented, and our kids need to know that we aren\u2019t out of touch.\u202f They need to know they are our biggest priority, even if it means we must watch \u201cDude Perfect\u201d when we\u2019d rather be scrolling Instagram ourselves. Saddle up parents; there is no more \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That on Television”.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you remember Nickelodeon in the 90\u2019s? There was this great sketch comedy show called, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That on Television,” starring some of the funniest Canadian teenagers and tweens telling jokes and doing skits in their natural hangouts throughout Ottawa. It was basically like \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d for kids, a precursor to \u201cAll That\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":26883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"How television and technology has changed since us parents were kids, and how we should handle it with our own kids.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"technology kids","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-wellness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Blog-4.16-Large.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26880"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33738,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880\/revisions\/33738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}