Takeaway From The Takeaway: Don't Let Reality TV Turn Your Kids Into Judgmental Jerks

Just as I suspected, my time on The Takeaway this morning discussing the impact of reality TV on teenagers had me sounding very much like an old-fashioned school marm. There I was talking about values and judgment and parental supervision, while 17-year old Grace stole the show with her concise analysis of the current reality lineup.

Initially, I thought the issue was more about what kind of bad behavior kids could learn from reality TV. Teenage brains aren’t fully developed, meaning they’re not as able to make sound decisions as (some) adults. They’re also in a process of figuring out who they are and what they like—a process that can be influenced by what they watch, what they listen to, and what they see their friends doing. Would seeing good looking, well-edited, casual-sex-having, AMEX-toting, underage-drinking teens on TV ruin the moral compass of “normal” kids?

As host John Hockenberry pointed out, however, kids aren’t stupid. They know that these shows are staged, that the producers intervene, and that situations are planned ahead of time for maximum conflict. Superstar Grace wished that shows were a bit more real, rather than trying to cram an entire week’s worth of experiences into 22-minute chunks.

So the issue is not whether watching self-absorbed teens on TV will turn your kids into similarly miserable humans. As Grace pointed out, half the fun comes from gawking over what a train wreck the Gosselin household has become, and tut-tutting over what kind of ridiculous, outrageous nonsense PC and the rest of the NYC Prep crowd pursued this week. (If you think I sounded like a moralizing old lady, you should hear what some of the NEWSWEEK interns have to say about NYC Prep. They clutch at their pearls with such genuine outrage over the show’s unapologetically shopping-obsessed, vapid characters that I sometimes think we were sent 19-year-old plants from the Parents Television Council).

If you’ve raised basically smart, decent kids, their morals and values should survive a weekend marathon of The Hills. They won't emerging on Sunday night hell-bent on getting implants just like Heidi’s (or, heaven forbid, a husband just like Heidi’s). But I do wonder if too much reality TV encourages kids to indulge a little too often in that all-to-human pursuits of judgment and schadenfreude. There is a thrill to realize that these morons on TV are, in fact, morons. As parents, it’s probably tempting to make the same point to your kids, all the better to underscore how the type of behavior so often rewarded with reality-TV airtime is not the type of behavior rewarded in real life.

The more difficult—but perhaps more important—challenge for parents and teens is finding ways to humanize and empathize with the real-life cartoons that are Spencer and Heidi, Daisy and London, and those awful Housewife women scattered across the country (I told you it was difficult). They may have bad taste in men, clothes, decor, and career trajectories, but that doesn't make it OK to dismiss them with easy categorization and snide, sanctimonious moralizing. (Better to dismiss them outright, by tuning out, then to appoint ourselves arbiters of all that is right and good.)

To me, the most shocking part of the whole Jon and Kate break-up was not the accusations of infidelity or the photos of Jon sunbathing with a young 20-something, but the vitriol and satisfaction people seemed to get from taking it all in, as well as the absolute certainty people had about why the marriage ended. Kate’s a bitch, they said. They sold out their family for money, and this is their just deserts. Everyone had an answer—and not a very long, nuanced one—about what went wrong, as if we could ever really know what goes on in someone else’s relationship, let alone place blame.

My mother has very specific rules when it comes to reality television—namely, that I’m never allowed to make any major life decisions while cameras are rolling. (Before reality TV it was, “Don’t talk to the 11 o’clock news if there’s ever a public family crisis.”) So thankfully, I’ve been well indoctrinated against the dangers of living your life on TV, which means all of my faults and bad habits (of which there are many) aren't caught on tape. But my stellar upbringing doesn’t give me any authority to pass judgment on those who decide to go in front of the cameras full time. Yes, putting one’s life on display for public consumption inevitably invites a lot of public discourse—but just because we can doesn’t mean we should. 

It’s fun and arguably less harmful to gossip about familiar strangers than close friends. It’s human to have a reaction, positive or negative, to the situations we see played out on screen. And it’s by reality-show design that real people are depicted as casual stereotypes. But it’s not good for the soul to spend too much time discussing the flaws and failings of other people; to delight in their misfortune and gloat about your own superior judgment and circumstances.

As we said on the show, you can’t hope to stop reality TV, only to contain it. It’s too cheap to produce, too wildly popular, and too culturally pervasive. But we can try to watch these shows with an educated eye, and not watch so many that we lose our ability to see these people as human. I feel the same way about reality shows as I do about donuts: everything in moderation. It’s another lesson I learned from Mom, and one that’s served me well. (At the time of this publication, I’ve had zero on-screen marriage proposals, messy breakups, or public firings. I have had one and a half donuts since Friday afternoon).  

Earlier: Raina Kelley on 16 and Pregnant

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