Christian Parents Are Not Comfortable With Media But Buy Them for Their Kids Anyway
What will parents buy their children or grandchildren for Christians in 2007?
(Ventura, CA) - Billions of dollars will be spent this Christmas season on gifts for children. A new national study by The Barna Group among Christian parents shows that even though most Christian parents are not always comfortable with the content of the media-related products, they purchase some of those items as presents for their children. The born again Christian population of the U.S. is likely to spend more than $1 billion on media products such as CDs, DVDs, video games and magazines for children under the age of 18 despite parental misgivings about the moral content or developmental affects of those resources.
Past Purchases and Feelings
The Barna survey discovered that the most widely purchased media by Christian parents in the past year were DVDs of movies and TV programs. More than three out of four Christian parents (78%) had purchased such disks for their teenagers and almost nine out of ten Christian parents (87%) had purchased DVDs for their children under 13. However, one-quarter of those adults (26%) did not feel comfortable with the DVD products they purchased.
The next most popular type of media content purchased for children by Christian parents were music CDs. About six out of ten parents bought these discs for their kids, yet one out of every three of those parents (33%) had concerns about the content. This was more evident among the parents of teenagers than among those who were buying music for pre-teens.
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THE TERM "CHRISTIAN" AND "BELIEVES IN GOD"
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Christian parents! Now there is a term that is generally used to describe anyone who believes in God. The term "Christian" today in our society could mean a Catholic, a Morman, a JW, or even a Baptist. The term "believes in God" also is used in a general way. Everyone seems to have a different meaning of the phrase "I believe in God." My past articles on "Can You Know Who Is A Christian" biblically deal with this subject, and I will continue with the articles later.
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WHAT ARE THEY BUYING IN 2007?
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Christian parents live in the same culture as the unbeliever, they buy the same foods, read the same newspaper, generally have a TV in their home, they have a laptop, or Gateway Window 98, or Dell Inspiron 530s Desktop Dual-Core Processor E4300 Genuine Windows, 1GB Memory and 250GB Hard Drive and plays and creates CD's and DVD's on a 17" Widescreen flat panel. (Oh, that is what I want for Christmas, Children, Charity, or someone!)
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Kids want a Garmin "Street Pilot" c330 GPS or ilo 1GB MP3 Player that will store up to 500 songs in MP3 and WMA formates. and if they are real good children this year, maybe the Apple80GB iPod Classic, where you can have 20,000 songs, 30 hours of music and 5 hours of video, now the iTunes cards are sold separetely. Or you could get the LGVX8500 Chocolate Phone for Verzion INpuluse.
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The Abox 360 Arcade Console System has the family settings so parents can control the games and movies the kids enjoy. But parents usually do not control what their kids watch a lot.
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Then there is the Nintendo DS Lite. Metallic Rose Gaming System with Ninetendogs game or Gold with The Legend of Zelda. How about a Black & Decker Toaster?
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And, of course, they are still selling the Cabbage Patch Kids Newborns. And dolls (Prince Charming) that someone told us on Saturday they stood in line for an hour to pay for it. They asked their four year old what they wanted this Christmas. Where do you think a four year old learns what she or he wants for Christmas?
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Charity was glad that Eric and Leslie came to our house this last weekend and put up the tree that was in storage for six years!
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Christian parents...... What will they buy their children in 2007?
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-Slightly more than half of all Christian parents had purchased video games for their children in the past year, in both the pre-teen and teen categories. About four out of ten pre-teen parents (39%) were concerned about the content of those games, compared to nearly half of the parents of teen recipients (46%) who admitted to such concerns.
Similarly, about half of all Christian parents (51%) had purchased magazines for their children. Roughly three out of ten Christian parents (31%) were not very comfortable with the content of the magazines acquired for their children.
- "Millions of Christian parents want to appear to be relevant in their children’s eyes, and to provide gifts that fit within the mainstream of postmodern society," Barna noted. "The problem is that many of the entertainment products that meet those criteria conflict with the moral precepts of the Christian faith."
- Parents have to make a choice as to what is more important: pleasing their kids’ taste and sensibilities, or satisfying God’ standards as defined in the Bible. When the decision made is to keep their children happy, the Christian parent is often left with a pit in their stomach.
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