• Quiz

Through this activity, parents examine some of the positive and negative messages that are prevalent in print media and discuss the impact these messages have on children.

1+ hour

A family photo album
Construction paper or poster board
Markers
Catalogs and magazines (Note: Your child will be cutting pictures from these.)
Scissors
Glue or tape

The National Institute on Media and the Family has created MediaQuotient® (MQ) for parents who are interested in discovering how media are influencing the attitudes, values, and behaviors of their children. MediaQuotient, includes a Family Media Inventory and a seven-page Individualized Media Profile based on the answers given on the inventory. The MQ profile describes how your media habits compare to other American families with children of similar ages, and provides recommendations for improving your media diet.

The MQ Media Profile provides feedback in the six following categories:

• Media Use - This category describes how an individual family uses electronic and print media.
• Monitoring - This category describes how closely parents monitor what their children watch or listen to.
• Consistency - This category describes how consistent parents and other adults in the household are regarding household rules about media use
• Media Effects - This category describes how much the media seem to affect the behavior of the children in the family
• Media Knowledge - This category describes the parent's level of knowledge about media and media effects.
• Alternative Activities - This category describes the number of alternatives to electronic media in which a family's children participate.

The MediaQuotient Family Media Inventory contains more than 120 questions. Below are several sample questions and responses.

1. How often is your TV on... even if no one is watching it?
   
       Often | Sometimes | Rarely | Never
   This is one of the questions used to determine your Media Use score (how your family uses electronic and print media). 54% of American families report Often or Sometimes having the TV on even if no one is watching. Research shows that families that report having the TV on more Often... even if no one is watching... have children who do more poorly in school. If you answered Often or Sometimes to this question, you may want to consider turning on the TV only when you have first determined that something is worth watching.

2. How often do you look at the industry ratings before renting or buying computer or video games?
   Always | Often | Sometimes | Rarely | Never | Don't Know | NA
   This is one of the questions used to determine your Monitoring score (how closely you monitor what your children watch or listen to). 40% of American parents never or rarely look at industry ratings before renting or buying computer or video games. Research shows that children and adults exposed to media violence become desensitized to it. They show reduced physiological response and are also less likely to seek help for real victims of violence. If you did not answer "Always" to this question, you may want to consider using rating systems whenever possible to help make informed decisions.

3. How often does your family play games or do activities together?
   Always | Often | Sometimes | Rarely | Never | Don't Know | NA
   
   This is one of the questions used to determine your Alternative Activities score (number or alternative activities your family participates in). 59% of American families reported that they often play games or do activities together. Research shows that in laboratory studies, rats who play in complex environments build more brain cells than rats who observed other rats playing. Active engagement produces more brain growth than watching others in active engagement. If you did not answer "Often" to this question, you may want to consider spending more time with your children doing interesting activities that do not include electronic media.

1. With your children, gather one or more family photo albums, several catalogs and magazines, construction paper or poster board, scissors, and glue or tape.

2. Ask your children why we take photographs of things. Answers might include: to remember an event, object, or person; to capture things that are important to us; to send to people (e.g., grandparents); etc.

3.With your children, look through a family photo album and create a list of activities or events that have been captured on film. The list might include, but should not be limited to:

• birthdays
• holidays
• graduations
• weddings
• ceremonies
• celebrations
• picnics
• new babies
• friends
• pets
• relatives
• family vacations
• playing outside
• playing sports

4. Look through the photo album again, looking for pictures of people watching TV, watching movies, playing computer or video games, or surfing on the Internet. Are there a lot of these kinds of pictures? If no, why not? Are these activities considered as important to the family as the activities in the other pictures?

5. Discuss how much time each week the family spends watching TV, watching movies, playing computer and video games, and surfing the Internet compared to the other activities illustrated by the photos. Does the amount of time spent on the activities accurately reflect how important each activity is?

6. Using pictures from magazines or catalogs, have each child create a collage of activities the family can do together that do not involve TV, movies, videos, computer or video games, computers, or the Internet.

7. Hang the collage on the refrigerator and make a commitment to do one or several of the activities as a family each week.

Prepared by Education Strategies for the
National Institute on Media and the Family