Campaign To Educate Parents About The V-Chip Announced
New Survey Finds Most Parents Want to Use the V-Chip, But Aren't Well Informed About How to Do So
Embargoed for release until: 10:30 a.m. EST, Monday, May 10, 1999
Contacts:
Debra Roth, Center for Media Education,
202/331-7833, ext. 38
Missy Krasner, Kaiser Family Foundation,
650/854-9400, ext. 268
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A national campaign to educate parents about the V-Chip TV ratings system was announced today by the Center for Media Education (CME) and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The V-Chip Education Project will teach parents how to use the V-Chip to screen TV content inappropriate for children, should they choose to do so. As required by Congress, half of all new TV sets must be equipped with a V-Chip by July 1, 1999, with the remaining half by January 1, 2000.
A survey released today by the Kaiser Foundation found that six out of ten parents say they are concerned "a great deal" that their children are being exposed to too much sex (66%) or violence (60%) in the TV shows they watch. Seventy-seven percent of parents say that if they had a V-Chip in their home they would use it to block shows they didn't want their children to see, a twelve percentage point increase over a year ago (65%).
But the survey also revealed that less than four out of ten (39%) parents has ever seen or heard anything explaining the TV ratings system, and that most parents do not have enough information about how the ratings work to be able to use the V-Chip effectively. In fact, use of the TV ratings has declined over the past year, according to the survey. Forty-four percent of parents say they use the TV ratings "often" or "sometimes" to help make decisions about what shows their children will watch, down from 54% of parents one year ago.
"Parental concern about sex and violence on TV has never been higher," said Drew Altman, Ph.D., president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "But parents who want to use the ratings and the V-Chip need to understand how they work first. That's the goal of this educational campaign."
"Children today are surrounded by an electronic media culture that often reverberates with violent images," said CME president Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. "The V-Chip was designed to give parents a choice in determining what level of violence, adult language and sexual expression they want to allow children to view," Montgomery continued. "That choice is meaningless unless they understand how the V-Chip works."
According to the Kaiser Foundation survey, nearly one out of five parents (19%) has not even heard of the TV ratings system. Even among those parents who are aware of the ratings system:
- Only five of the 11 ratings categories are understood by a majority of parents (TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, V and L; TV-Y, TV-Y7, TV-MA, S, D, and FV are not understood by most parents);
- Less than half of parents know that sitcoms (47%), children's shows (45%), talk shows (43%), or soap operas (21%) are rated;
- Among parents with children under 10, only 17% can name one of the ratings used to identify shows specifically designed for children (TV-Y, TV-Y7), and only 4% know what the rating "FV" means (it stands for "fantasy violence" and is the only rating that indicates whether a children's show contains violence).
Even before the tragic events in Littleton, Colorado, CME and the Kaiser Foundation had been planning The V-Chip Education Project to coincide with the July 1 deadline for the availability of V-Chip equipped TV sets in retail stores. The educational campaign will include the distribution of free booklets for parents on how the ratings system and the V-Chip works, and will guide viewers on how to best watch television with children. The free parent information will be promoted through a toll-free telephone number, newspaper inserts, a new Web site, and an outreach effort involving the nation's leading parent, education and health groups.
Methodology: Parents and the V-Chip is a national random sample survey of parents of children ages 2-17. The survey was designed by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Princeton Survey Research Associates (PSRA) and was conducted by PSRA by telephone between April 6-26, 1999. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The survey updates a previous Foundation survey, Parents, Children and the Television Ratings System, conducted in April, 1998. In the current survey, some interviews were completed after the Littleton, Colorado school shootings. None of the findings reported in this release had statistically significant differences between the pre and post Littleton respondents.
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, is an independent national health care philanthropy and not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries. This survey was conducted as part of the Foundation's Program on the Entertainment Media & Public Health, which was established to examine the impact of entertainment media in society and to work with entertainment industry leaders to help them convey important health messages to the public.
The Center for Media Education (CME) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a quality media culture for children, families and their communities. Founded in 1991, CME fosters telecommunications policymaking in the public interest through its research, advocacy, public education and outreach initiatives.
Copies of the
survey questionnaire and complete results are available online at
www.kff.org, or by calling the Kaiser Family Foundation's publications request line at 1-800-656-4533 and requesting publication #1477.
