This is as good a reason I can think of to encourage our kids to do something other than just watching TV all the time (while not forbidding it), help them become educated media consumers, and foster open, healthy, mutually respectful relationships (with them). Mind you, I don’t mean to preach – I’m far from perfect myself.

The author will be appearing here (follow link) this Wednesday to discuss the impact the media has on our daughters. Even if you don’t have a daughter, it may still be worth a look.

Alternet:

Sometimes people dismiss the media as being unimportant or trivial or just entertainment with no impact whatsoever. For people that study the media, it’s clear that it’s not just background noise, that we live in a media-saturated environment, that media shape our understanding of the world. So I don’t think that we should just dismiss it. I think that we ought to take media seriously.