David Kleeman

April 30 - May 6 is "Screen-Free Week," intended to help families "break the screen habit." Unfortunately, by emphasizing "break" rather than "manage," this annual event doesn't promote wise family media habits any more than "Eat Nothing Week" would foster healthy diets.

When it was established in 1994, "TV Turnoff...

Tuesday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released the long-awaited update to its 1999 policy statement on media use by children younger than two. I am amazed that with 12 years to work on it, the AAP labored so mightily and brought forth such a mouse.

To be sure,...

News sources can't resist an inflammatory headline about the ills of exposing children to media. Academics, increasingly in an environment where "publish or perish" isn't enough: you have to publish and publicize, are all too willing to oblige. This week, the perpetrator has been an innocent and entertaining...

Earlier this week, a participant on change.org launched an online petition for Sesame Street to "let" Bert and Ernie get married. I'm a strong advocate of marriage equality and LGBT rights, but here's why I think this petition is ill-advised.

Sesame Street curriculum is built around...

In the July issue of "Pediatrics," a research team headed by Iowa State's Douglas Gentile found that parents are not satisfied with age-based rating systems like those used by the television V-chip, on video game boxes, or for movies by the MPAA. As I read coverage of the...

As long as media have created content for children, there have been debates about what defines "quality." From the "penny dreadfuls" to radio to comic books to music, and onward to TV and digital media, parents have been cautioned about wasted time, moral decay or learning delays. At the same...

He said he'd be back, and here he is. At the MIP-TV television market in Cannes, France, one of the children's series up for sale is The Governator, a little retirement project for former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The animated program combines all his previous careers -- bodybuilder,...

This week is the "perfect storm" of children's entertainment conferences -- Toy Fair, Engage Expo and the Kidscreen Summit. Executives, creators and analysts representing merchandise, TV and digital screen media, music and books, and more have descended on New York to see what's new and debate the state of our...

Last week, I attended my first Consumer Electronics Show, the massive exhibition of all things technology in Las Vegas. Not unlike Sin City itself, it's something everyone should see once, just for the jaw-dropping sensory overload. With 140,000 attendees walking 35 football fields of show floor, it's no surprise that...

Children's television has been a playground for memes for as long as it's existed (much longer than "meme" has been a word!). Most are light and from pop culture -- from Davy Crockett coonskin caps to rumors of gay Teletubbies. Others grow from more dire murmurs about media's effects on...

Children's television icon Fred Rogers was fond of quoting from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince": "That which is essential is invisible to the eye." Of course, the invisible essential can be wondrous or appalling. It's long been said that one should never see law or sausages being made; in...

In recent weeks, papers worldwide have punched parents' guilt buttons yet again by hyping a study that claims screen time harms children. Editors seemingly competed to give the Iowa State University research the most extreme headline: "Watching TV and playing video games can 'DOUBLE risk of getting ADHD',"...