Article July 11, 1970 Issue

Disarming Mass Media Suggestion

[For parents]

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON

Children's thoughts need more effective protection from the vicious influences that mass media both blatantly and stealthily wield today. Recently The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence reported: "Violence on television encourages violent forms of behavior and fosters moral and social values about violence in daily life which are unacceptable in a civilized society."

So prevalent are the claims of the attractiveness of physical and intellectual sensualism that a parent is often tempted to wish he could wrap his child in a protective cocoon. A demonstrable understanding of Christian Science does just this. But not by smothering the child under a blanket of parental domination. Rather, it correctly identifies the child as a spiritual idea of God, wholly immune to evil's enticements.

Several years ago the children in a family were fascinated by a highly popular television program that glamorized violence and premarital sexual relationships. Forbidding the children to watch it did not seem to help, because they either managed to watch it with their friends or heard the story at school the next morning.

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