I'm not a huge fan of the mainstream newspapers but couldn't help but be a little disturbed by a recent article which highlighted the influence of the media on kids - 'Little girls the new sex objects' The article reported that many young girls "by the age of 6 were transforming themselves into sexualised 'mini-adults' by wearing bras, nail polish and lipstick, and are requiring psychological help in increasing numbers.
" Great! But how can this be? How can kids be so heavily influenced, or should I say infiltrated, by the media that we are in essence altering childhood development? I believe it's a simple answer - it's the 'fabric' of the media we accept and our ease of access to it.
Let me clarify what I mean when I use the term media.
I'm referring to traditional media such as film, television, radio, newspapers and magazine's, and new media such as the internet including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The growth of new media has been astounding and all traditional media outlets are rushing to embrace it - or perish as media mogul Rupert Murdoch warned Never before have we had such instantaneous and easy access to information.
The internet/information age is transforming how we interact with our world, and it's also transforming how we see our world - which to me is an often overlooked part of the equation.
We need to look at the focus we put on the bad news, as much as the bad news! This fast moving media beast is almost unrecognisable from what it was even 10 years ago.
We now have 'citizen journalists' videoing some of the latest incidents on their mobiles and uploading them on YouTube or selling the footage to television networks.
A recent example was when Michael Jackson died and within minutes it had been reported and images of his body was displayed on TV and all from someone's mobile phone - not a reporter, it was John Q Public.
I'll be straight up; I'm a big fan of new media in the sense that it broadens the voice and opportunity for people to be more engaged in their world.
We now have a media environment where the motivated can easily challenge the prevailing wisdom across multiple forums, and with this comes an opportunity not just for the media to be more accountable, but also for politicians and other public figures to be also.
There really is nowhere to hide anymore and that's not necessarily a bad thing - if it's not abused.
Once a story used to be written or shown on TV, syndicated if lucky, and mostly it just disappeared into the dustbin of history.
Now it will be on YouTube, or on blogs, or rehashed for months or years, only to appear years later and go through the same process all over again.
Hey I bet David Lettermen is wishing it was the good ole' days? As with all change we are adapting to the new environment, but in terms of our kids I really think it is about not whether this is happening, whether it's a good thing, for it's only going to get bigger! What is a bigger concern for me as a parent is I don't want my son to grow up in a world where the dominant fabric of the media is negative.
I'm happy that he has all this incredible information resources at his fingertips, but I don't want him to be sucked into believing that the world is an evil place.
It's not! Yes I know evil exists, yes I know there are paedophiles about, but if you were to log on to any mainstream media website you'd think bad things are the only things that happen in our world.
Recently we've had the debate about the Australain Government Net Filter or Net Alert.
There were cries of censorship, that it was an intrusion on our rights to know everything.
What it really said to me was that we have such a shocking attraction to ugliness that we need to be saved from ourselves.
Sure we need to filter out child pornography or any degrading sexual exploitation but just as much we need to question how much information is enough.
When does it become a destructive element to the overall wellbeing of our society? I want to bring your attention to an article that was in a recent online newspaper.
It was about the awful story of a jilted father who threw his daughter over a bridge in Victoria.
We are reliving this horror again today, but this time we are being told of the awful despair her brother felt.
My heart breaks when reading this BUT is that not the intention of the article? It's not really news, its basically information designed to make you feel bad, and just maybe news outlets believe that is the best way to get you to log on or purchase a paper? So the question I ask is this, as much as it is important to protect your kids from the proliferation of pornography, violence etc, is it perhaps just as important to discourage them from watching the news or being too 'informed'.
At least until there are truly more people in the media dedicated to showing the world in its truer state.
Do your own test, log onto any online newspaper and scan the front page.
How much is truly essential news and how much of it is really worth knowing? I sort of think on reflection you might agree - there's not a lot we couldn't do without!