Community Corner

Does Your Child Watch (Emulate) 'Jersey Shore'?

Kids and TV can be tricky. Letting your children watch TV shows with adult themes can be even trickier.

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Today's topic: MTV's "Jersey Shore" has been one of the most popular shows on television for the last two years. And the audience watching most? Middle school and high school kids.

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From a Huff Post Parents report:

We talk often about the sexualization of girls in the media and elsewhere, but whereas television commercials, magazines, websites, fashion ads, and The Disney Channel are hitting them like sidestream smoke, Jersey Shore is a fire hose of destructive messaging.

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Boiled down to the facts, the top TV show for young teen girls features "real" characters who spend their days being stupid, getting drunk, and having indiscriminate sex -- often at the same time, usually enjoyably, and always without lasting consequences.

To impressionable young minds, there's a message in all of that, and if it doesn't make you wince, you're not paying attention. 

Kids are impressionable. And if they think going out and "their days being stupid, getting drunk, and having indiscriminate sex" is the cool thing to do, what's a parent to do?

So we ask you: What do you tell your children when they watch similar TV shows? Do you remind them that this is not how real life is? Do you not let them watch at all? Or do you let them watch and come to their own conclusions? 

Chime in below to help some area parents that are going through this process for the first time.

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