FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Want to regulate your child’s summertime television habits? It may be more complicated than setting a few rules. A new study from the University of Arkansas indicates that it’s not the most restrictive parents but the most involved parents who more effectively regulate their children’s viewing.

For the past two years, Ron Warren, assistant professor of communication, has been studying how television and Internet usage shape and are shaped by family communication, particularly the dynamics between parent and child. He recently presented his findings at the annual International Communication Association meeting in Washington, D.C.

"The literature suggests that patterns of family communication — whether a parent emphasizes obedience or open expression — should influence how they use media in their house. But our study didn’t find that to be a strong determining factor," Warren said.

"What really seemed to matter was how much time parents spent sharing activities with their kids, things like recreational activities, family outings, even cleaning the house or fixing dinner," he added. "The more involved parents were, the more they supervised and discussed what their kids saw on TV."

Through telephone and take-home surveys, Warren has collected data on nearly 800 families in Northwest Arkansas. The surveys assess parenting styles and communication patterns as well as how many activities parents share with their children, from domestic chores to recreational fun. The questionnaires also examine television use, asking how parents establish rules, how often they watch television with their kids and how often they discuss what they’ve viewed.

In a sense, Warren’s research is working to settle a dispute. The field of communication holds two opposing perspectives on the way that television impacts family interaction. The first perspective claims that television isolates family members even when they watch it together. As a silent activity, viewing prevents communication and interaction from taking place. However, the other perspective suggests that television may stimulate family communication.

"Television can actually be a very useful tool for parents, especially in its ability to introduce topics that parents might find awkward or embarrassing to bring up on their own," Warren said. "If a TV program depicts drug use or sex or violence, that’s a golden opportunity to open a discussion with your child. That’s what we call a 'teachable moment,’ and it can actually facilitate communication between parents and their kids."

According to Warren, discussing the content of a television show is an important step in founding healthy viewing habits for children. Responses to his survey showed that most parents regulate television use by setting rules. But Warren believes that truly effective regulation requires three distinct actions.

First, parents must establish rules that restrict viewing time and content. Second, parents should endeavor to watch television with their children, an activity called "co-viewing." Finally, parents should take the opportunity to talk to their kids about what they just viewed. Fewer than 30 percent of the families in Warren’s study reported using all three tactics to regulate their child’s viewing.

But Warren emphasizes that all three steps are important, particularly the discussion. Such discussions are not only useful for teaching adolescents about sensitive topics, he said, but they also teach younger children how to interpret what they’ve seen.

"Young kids can’t process all the material they absorb from watching TV. But if an adult takes the time to talk to them, teach them, the end result is a child who can watch television critically, understand and interpret the messages within it," he said.

But Warren also recognizes that televisions aren’t the only screen in most modern households. Computers, particularly Internet use, can also affect the way that families communicate and interact. Just as with his television studies, the second aspect of Warren’s research seeks to identify the factors that determine how parents regulate Internet use.

Examining his data, Warren expected to find that the same factors that determine television restriction would also determine Internet restriction. Not so, he discovered. Neither communication patterns nor parental involvement impacted the way that parents regulate their child’s use of the web. In fact, the only factor that correlated to computer restriction was television restriction.

In other words, parents who strongly governed their kids’ television viewing also strongly governed their use of the Internet. Parents with more relaxed attitudes about television viewing approached the Internet with fewer restrictions.

"My view is that parents just don’t know what to do with the Internet. Other than worrying that their kid might access pornography or some bomb-making site, I don’t think parents comprehend the complexity of the content their kids can tap on the web," Warren said. "It comes down to this: the computer looks like a television, so parents treat it like a television."

Warren believes that the Internet deserves its own set of restrictions, more tailored to the medium as well as to individual family values. However, he doubts those restrictions will be developed until parents become more Internet savvy. In the meantime, any sort of regulation is beneficial, he says, especially considering how much time kids spend between one screen or another.

Statistics show that children, particularly those aged 7-12, spend as many as four hours a day either watching TV or surfing the web.

"When you consider that kids are only home six to eight hours a day, that’s about half their time spent in front of a screen," Warren said. "Parents have two choices: they can whittle that down or learn to use it wisely."

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