Idly flipping through channels on a lazy Sunday morning, I chanced on a children’s show relaying a school presentation.
The children tried to dance like adults, wiggling little waists and equally little bottoms. I scoffed at the obvious attempt to look ‘cool’ like the adults they see on television. You don’t have to be a fundamentalist to see that something is not right about some television shows on our screens.
The holiday season is here and many young people are being left home with access to all types of TV programs. We are in a global era where, as parents, we may not have much that we can do. But still the obligation remains to try and rein in our young people.
Despite Uganda having a law on pornography, many TV stations continue to show music of women who are almost nude and films that are violence-packed. In neighboring Kenya, the government is getting tough on TV stations and musicians shooting distasteful videos of half-naked young ladies dancing in acts that appear to promote promiscuity. But nudity is not the biggest of our problems, alcohol consumption and misuse by the youth is.
Recent research by the US surgeon general revealed that alcohol is the most consumed beverage on prime time television shows. Television characters drink alcohol twice as often as they drink tea or coffee.
In Uganda, the case is more or less the same with many soaps and films including drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, to some extent female-targeted violence and, recently, same-sex relationships. The actors in all these soaps and films are not the villains or the bit players; they are wealthy, good, steady, likable characters, and portrayals are entirely devoid of indications of possible risks to whatever action they indulge in.
When we consider that, in addition to alcohol consumption portrayed during programs, the average Ugandan citizen could be seeing over 50,000 television advertisements for alcoholic beverages, cigarette smoking, female-based violence and general violence in action and war films before age 21.
This is reasonable enough to suggest that TV exposure will affect our children’s habits in the short and long run, if not already.
Research in New Zealand confirmed a direct correlation between frequency of television viewing among 13- to 15-year-olds and quantity of alcohol consumed at age 18. We may not have done any such specific studies in Uganda, but chances are high that the situation could be worse.
A follow-up study in New Zealand concluded that it was the TV-watching that produced bad habits in the youth, and not the youths watching TV that had the bad habits.
A team at Stanford University recently succeeded in quantifying television’s effect on teenage drinking. Studying over 1,500 ninth-grade public high school students in San Jose, California, the Stanford researchers discovered that one extra hour of television viewing per day was associated with an average nine per cent increase in the risk of starting to drink over the next eighteen months; similarly, one extra hour of music video MTV viewing per day was associated with an average 31 per cent increase in the risk of starting to drink over the next eighteen months.
These probabilities remained even after controlling for the effects of age, sex, ethnicity, and other media use. This does not include the other habits the young people learn from watching TV.
On a typical weekend in USA, an average of one teenager dies every two hours in a car crash involving alcohol. In light of these statistics, we must consider whether we want our children to absorb TV messages about alcohol and other habits or whether there is something more productive they could do with their time.
A visit to our country’s only mental hospital in Butabika will shock many that what is happening in the US, Europe and New Zealand is already happening in Uganda. To speak more crudely, hooliganism is on the rise in our education institutions. We see teens drinking waragi in sachets and misusing drugs. These are school-going children. Theft of household items and car parts by young people is now commonplace.
Many children, especially from wealthy families, are undergoing rehabilitation over drugs and alcohol. This calls for action on the part of parents and government to save our young generation.
And while we tax Uganda Communications Commission with getting tough on content of TV programming, perhaps the bigger responsibility lies with parents who have the God-given responsibility to raise the next generation in an environment equally balanced with regulation and appropriate exposure.
The author is a former state minister for foreign affairs.
