Jon Katz, Wired News The Great American Cop-Out Today If spreading ignorance and misinformation were an indictable offense, our jails would be stuffed with journalists, preachers, politicians, academics, and pompous intellectuals, all of whom have joined forces in our time to suggest that the young are being decivilized and endangered by the information revolution - especially by TV, film, music, and the Internet. From rap to MTV, from "The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" to heavy metal, from porn on the Net to violence on the tube, Americans have been bombarded with the idea that the young get their morals from media more than from other sources. A New York Times survey recently found that Americans believe TV is more responsible for violence than any other factor, including family structure, education, or the availability of lethal weapons. Last year, Bob Dole made movie violence the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. President Clinton and Vice President Gore have repeatedly championed V-chips, E-chips, and other censorship technology to protect the young from the toxic side effects of popular culture and the digital age. This notion of media and popular culture posing a threat to the young has been both an economic and political windfall for the opportunistic, who have waged a broad-based cultural retaliation against artists, producers, filmmakers, and later, the digital world, to advance political careers, sell books, block software, and make existing institutions like newspapers and academia seem the last frontiers of civilization. Parents who ought to be held responsible for the children they bring into the world are instead encouraged to blame Hollywood and music producers for the dangers facing the young. At least now there is finally some ammo for the young among you, whose access to the Web is blocked or monitored, who are demeaned by idiotic and confusing ratings, and who are prevented from watching MTV and hectored by parents about cultural choices, to use in fighting back. A bevy of medical researchers recently conducted a massive federally funded study called the Add Health Project. They presented their findings last month in "Protecting Adolescents from Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health," which was published in the 10 September l997 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Young or old, anyone who loves popular culture and is even peripherally involved in new media needs to get hold of this study, hide it in their room or locker, and smack their parents, teachers, politicians, and local newscasters upside the heads with it, when appropriate. Save it for PTA meetings and university cocktail parties. Whip it out at local school-board meetings when Johnny finally gets to the Playboy Web site on the school computer. Although it is profoundly significant to American families, you will not see this study on the front pages of papers, or leading the local newscasts that have trumpeted Net and pornography, rap and violence, or media and teen-danger stories for decades now. The study, one of the most comprehensive ever of adolescents and the risks they face, found that adolescent health is influenced not only by the strengths and vulnerabilities of individual kids, but also by the character of the settings in which they live. As a group, the study found, adolescents are physically healthy. The dangers they face stem from their behavior - drinking and driving, involvement in violence, early and unprotected sex, drug abuse, poor nutrition, smoking, and sedentary lifestyles. By most measures, said the study, teenagers across the country are doing well. Most teens, most of the time, make choices that keep them from harm. But the Add Health study was also able to pinpoint young people who aren^Rt doing well and aren^Rt making sensible choices. For example, teens in rural areas, urban kids on welfare, and minority youth are more likely to participate in violence and/or suffer from emotional distress than others. The study reports no connection of any sort between popular culture, the Internet, music, TV, Hollywood, or other information and entertainment technologies, and danger to teenagers. It reinforces the idea that scholars of children and morality from Robert Coles to James Q. Wilson have been reporting for years: that morality in children comes early, is profoundly influenced by the example and connection with parents, and comes primarily from the home. "The home environment makes a difference in American youth," found the University of Minnesota researchers. "When teens feel connected to their families and when parents are involved in their children^Rs lives, teens are protected." Teens are also protected, the study found, when they don't have easy access to guns, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs at home. Teens are markedly safer when they have parents who have high expectations for their performance in school. The study reinforces the notion that parents - not ratings systems, blocking software, or V-chips - teach morality and values to children and help them make their own safe and rational choices about life. This is the complete opposite of what most mainstream journalists and politicians have been reporting for years: that wanton, vulnerable children are increasingly being depraved by popular culture, and that the new technologies that transmit it need censoring. Media might be offensive, even disturbing, but when it comes to kids and morality, parents are clearly responsible for how kids turn out, and this and other studies support that. But some parents still don't seem willing to take responsibility for their kids. "When a parent is physically present in the home at key times," the JAMA article says, "and has high expectations for the child^Rs education, children are on the road to being protected from involvement in behaviors that can damage them. In addition, when teens feel very connected to parents and family members, they report less frequent use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. This is true of both younger and older teenagers." Likewise, Coles and Wilson found that children connected in early years to parents are eager for moral guidance and instruction from them, and are receptive to it. They are then able to negotiate highly complex social environments (such as media), because they have a value system in place that helps them make good decisions. The Add Health study also found that American adolescents stand a better chance of avoiding risky behavior when they experience strong connections to their school; when they feel teachers treat them fairly, they feel close to other teenagers and get along with teachers and students. In the health dangers and outcomes examined, the study's results point overwhelmingly to the importance of family and the home environment as the primary means of protecting adolescents. The shifting of this responsibility onto media or other cultural influences only keeps the culture from focusing on the forces that make children safer. V-chips won't do that. Neither will ratings systems or cybersitters. Parents can. What is most striking about these findings - almost all obvious manifestations of common sense - is that it took an expensive federal study to report them. Journalism and politics, two of the institutions that should be helping us reach some clarity about adolescence and safety, have chosen instead to exploit and manipulate adults' fears for their children, rather than intelligently inform us about them. It often seems as if journalism has turned itself into a series of societal Chicken Littles in order to make us see it as useful and necessary. Ironic, since reporting of the truth would make us need and want journalism so much more. The insignificant bit of coverage given this study is a bitter indictment of how journalism works to make us mistrust it, and to misinform us about the young, especially when compared to the massive amount of print and airtime given to "dangers" like violence on TV, rap music, or pornography on the Net. From this study and other findings, parental supervision and availability is a child's right, as elemental and central as antibiotics for fighting a viral infection or freedom from abuse. Children are entitled to the information in the Add Health Project, to confront educators, parents, and journalists with, and to better arm themselves against the ignorant and ill-informed hysteria in the institutions of politics, religion, education, and journalism that pass for teaching the young how to be moral and safe. If journalists spent a thousandth of the time focusing on the reality of adolescent safety that they spend making phobic distortions about it, perhaps this country could get on with the real business of eradicating genuine risks to teenagers, and perhaps even take up the little-discussed but most pressing moral issue involving the young and new technology: Not how to protect children from the information age, but how to make sure they all have equal access and participate in it. Anyone interested can get up to 25 free copies of "Reducing the Risk: Connections That Make a Difference in the Lives of Youth" by writing to: Add Health c/o Burness Communications 7910 Woodmont Avenue Suite 1401 Bethesda, Maryland 20814 This article appeared originally in HotWired. Copyright ) 1993-97 Wired Ventures Inc. and affiliated companies. All rights reserved.