Why The Avengers ruined my weekend

We had a media moral dilemma at our house this weekend. My seven-year-old, Nathan got invited to a birthday party of one of his really good friends. The party plan? Eat pizza and watch The Avengers. When he got the invitation, Nate was SO excited: I mean, birthday parties are a big deal when you are 7 years old. But when I saw the activity, my heart sunk.  Nate REALLY wanted to go to the party, but I have seen the Avengers and it is absolutely, 100% not appropriate for kids this age. It's PG-13 and I won't even let me kids watch some of the PG movies. I was a little surprised: the family who were having the party are a great LDS family down the street. But I guess it's just a job hazard of studying the media every day for over a decade now, that I am more than a little wary of what my kids watch on TV!



We had A LOT of conversations about what we could do. Nate thought maybe he could still go, but then just watch the parts "that aren't bad" (according to him)....unfortunately, this movie is pretty much non-stop violence so that would be hard to do! He also thought he could go to the first part and then just leave when the movie started, but the entire party was the movie :( Seriously, this is was really tough! We talked about how sometimes Choosing the Right isn't easy at all. We looked up The Avengers on my favorite website www.commonsensemedia.org and talked about what was in the movie. And that seemed to really hit Nathan hard: after that, Nate decided that it probably wasn't a good idea to go to the party. But what to do? We decided that instead of going to the party, he could invite one of his best friends over for a "late-over" where they could eat snacks and watch a movie that was okay. He invited his friend Zach over, they ate popcorn with Marshmallow topping (sounds so gross, but Zach brought it over) and watched Robin Hood (the animated version). And they had a blast! So, the party was forgotten and all is right in the world. What struck me was that I wasn't prepared for how hard this conversation and decision was to make. It was a no brainer to me, but Nate really really really really really wanted to go. No matter how much I know, or how much research I do, being a parent in this media generation is STILL hard! But I'm proud of Nate for making the right decision in the end, and I think he learned a really good lesson, even though it was not an easy choice. Bring on the next thing.......

Facebook official

Well, I'm officially Facebook official! Here is how we announced:




















We already have three little coynes, but will soon have four! Baby #4 due may 2013!

So, my mother CANNOT keep a secret, so once I told her that we were telling people, she immediately told her entire side of the family. When I found this out, I thought we better hurry and announce or everyone would hear secondhand! Facebook is by far the easiest way to get the word out, so we put this up yesterday. And within hours we had over 100 likes and 60+ comments....which when you consider my previous post makes me feel all warm and snuggly, I suppose! It's not very personal, and I woud have prefered to tell everyone face-to-face, but in today's world, this is what we do, especially for people who are far away or we don't see very often.

Is "liking" a status prosocial?

I'm at the prosocial conference right now preparing my talk tomorrow on prosocial media. I had a thought while preparing.....I recently posted a picture of me after I ran a 5k. Not a huge deal, but was good for me. Within a few hours I had 68 people "like" me and 18 comments saying how awesome I was. Which obviously made me feel pretty good, much better than when I post something and nobody likes it or comments on the post (ostracism? I'm not sure).



So I was thinking, is this a form of prosocial behavior in the media? I think commenting certainly is...well, when the comments are nice and complimentary. But is "liking" something prosocial? Am I being a nice to someone when I like their status? Am I saying that I like them or their behavior? Is this beneficial to the person who posted something? I may be off the map here, but I think there is something psychologically beneficial about saying something and 68 people immediately saying they like it. More importantly, they are saying this in public. What do you think? How do feel when someone either likes or doesn't like your facebook staus? Comments or doesn't comment?

I miss you guys! I hope you enjoyed Miss-representation today, it's one of my very favorites! Can't wait to discuss it with you on class on Tuesday!