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It used to be as simple as getting the directions to Sesame Street or spending the afternoon with Barney or Mr. Rogers. But if the latest Nielsen ratings are any indication, today’s children are more interested in watching people eat blended pig guts and cow tongues than singing songs and learning their ABCs.

Figures released by Nielsen Media Research in March and April show (1) that Fear Factor, NBC’s gross-out reality series, is prime time’s third most-watched (3) program among 2-to-5-year-olds, behind only CBS’s Survivor and ABC’s My Wife and Kids.

The ratings of children watching the adult-oriented shows may be misrepresentative (12) of what children are really watching (7) and may represent what their parents are watching instead.

“My kids don’t watch those kinds of shows,” said Pamela Greene, whose five children range from 16 months to 9 years old. “We watch things like Disney and Discovery Kids. I’m not happy with a lot of shows that are on network TV”.

She said that her children spend their TV time watching shows such as Disney’s (13) Even Stevens and Cartoon Network’s Thundercats and Power Rangers. However, local Nielsen ratings suggest that her children are watching the same thing as other children in the area. [...]

According to Allan Josephson, a professor of psychiatry and chief adolescent and family psychiatrist at Medical College of Georgia, the ratings could be attributed to the baby-sitter phenomenon (8) - a general lack of human interaction - and could have detrimental (4) effects on children. “Children that age don’t have the ability to distinguish between fiction and reality,” Dr. Josephson said. “They don’t have the cognitive capacity. The ratings show (2) a general lack of supervision”.

Mrs. Greene said she believes children learn from the TV programs they watch - and the lessons being taught may not always be the ones she wants her children to learn. “I think adult reality TV is awful”, she remarked. “These shows are (5) teaching children that you do whatever it takes to get ahead. They are teaching them that it’s OK to cheat and steal to get what you want.”

But children in the 2-to-5 age bracket (6) don’t have the ability to learn those lessons, Dr. Josephson said. “It just goes completely over their heads,” he said. “It won’t teach them anything. It’ll just scare them (9).” [...]

The ratings could be indicative of a bigger problem with society. “It’s a sign that these parents can’t be bothered to do something active with their children (10),” Dr. Josephson said. “Children in that age bracket should be doing things like physical motor play, group interaction, the kind of stuff kids see on Sesame Street (11).’’

Jennifer Hilliard for The Augusta Chronicle, June 4, 2002.

In “misrepresentative” (12) the prefix mis- has the same meaning as in: