29 Jan, 2015
Is there such a thing as ‘good’ screen time?
Posted by andrea tomkins in: parenting|Publishing/writing/career stuff
I’ve written a lot about screen time, here on the Fishbowl and over on the MediaSmarts blog. I think I can summarize my feelings thusly: I’m not against TV, video games, iDevices etc. I do however, worry about the effect these things are having on our brains and attention spans and I believe there should be limits to how much time we spend with them instead of doing other things. I do also believe it’s fair to make a distinction between GOOD media and CRAPPY media consumption. I touched on the idea in this past post. GOOD media is brain food.
In that post I mentioned a book that stayed with me. Please allow me to quote myself for a moment:
There’s a memoir by Canadian writer and film critic David Gilmour called The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and a Son
. It’s essentially about how the author finds himself underemployed with a 15-year old son who wants to drop out of high school. He lets him do this on one condition, that they watch three movies each week together. It is pretty unconventional parenting, and I find it interesting for several reasons but it really hit the idea home that watching a great film with your kid may be as important as sitting down to dinner together.
We’ve always been keen on great films here at Casa Fishbowl, but in my latest post on the MediaSmarts blog I’ve write a bit about how we are honing our interest down even further. You can read that right here.
Spoiler alert! One of the things I’ve resolved to do is watch more documentary films as a family. Here are three recent ones that have been entertaining and insightful in equal measure.
I asked some friends on Facebook what documentaries they’d recommend and here are a few of their suggestions (I have a lot of Googling to do!): Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Frozen Sea, Fed Up, The Blue Planet, Elmo, 100 Feet from Stardom, Muscle Shoals, Sound City, Happy, Kings of Pastry, Don’t Look Back, The Flat, Ken Burns docs, Super Size Me, Revolution.
It’s worth noting that we’ve been watching Life Story on CBC and REALLY enjoying it! It contains some of the best wildlife footage I’ve ever seen.
