Parental Controls, Fear, and Media Safety

Peter Stearns makes some interesting arguments about the level of fear in American society in his 2006 book American Fear. His main thesis is how America has become fixated on controlling fear which makes them vulnerable to the manipulation of fear and anxiety by politicians, media, and terrorists. This reiterates many of the themes of the 2000 book by Barry Glassner Culture of Fear, although Glassner is less kind to the media.

What struck me as particularly interesting was Stearns’ discussion on how the baby boomers have turned into control-freak parents after a relatively unencumbered childhood. I don’t know about you, but my parents never asked where I was going when they told us to ‘go outside and play.’ I did not have a bike helmet, an RFID chip in my backpack (or a ‘backpack’ for that matter), and you could meet visiting relatives at the gate when they got off the airplane.

Times have changed, I know, for lots of reasons. I wonder what has made people so fearful and conversely what makes us so determined to deny the randomness of the real world. Bruce Wexler, among others, in the 2006 Brain and Culture, argues that once we lose the brain plasticity of youth, we are more inclined to shape the environment to our cognitive needs, than we are able or willing to adjust our brains to new realities. The ramifications of this are extraordinary, from V-chips and foreign policy, to homeland security.

I find it sort of entertaining that the people who wore flowers in their long and generally unkempt hair, armbands, protested Vietnam, and generally viewed anyone over 30 as totally clueless about the way the world works should become so hyper-vigilant as parents. And if I am honest, I have to confess to erring on the side of more, rather than less supervision, myself. And yes, I had long hair with flowers in it once, too.

One of the areas we continue to see anxiety by parents, is in new media, the Internet and video games. A useful resource in this regard is Adam Thierer’s (Director of the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s (PFF) Center for Digital Media Freedom) newly released update to his report Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods. This report is available in its entirety for download at not cost and is a very thorough discussion of what is available for parents, what the industry is doing, and how parents can take action. The material is very inclusive and balanced, although Thierer does not hide his point of view that we’ll do better if the government doesn’t intervene and regulate digital media. Aside from the whole pesky free speech issue of regulation, I think a lot of the agitation for regulation (aside from vote-getting tactics) is the result people’s lack of familiarity with digital media combined with the current climate of fear that Stearns and Glassner argue make us see a boogie man around every corner and our inability to adapt cognitively to rapid change. Personally, I don’t want the government deciding for me either; that’s how you get to Fahrenheit 451 in these times of anxiety. Thierer’s report is additionally timely as he is one of the participants, including of the Internet Safety Task Force chaired by John Palfrey, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard law.