Media Sense & Sensibility

“For the sake of our children & their generation”

Sitting through a video depicting a handful of kids dancing along to their favorite dinosaur, Barney, belting out his theme song  “I Love You”, many smiled and laughed at the innocence of the carefree children. The amusement was substituted with astonishment as the subsequent scenes jolted most of the participants. A room full of animated children began simulating their on-screen Power Rangers heroes, jostling with each other in imitation of the exhilarating fighting scenes and grappling violently with one another out of spirited mischief. Could teenage violence have originated at such early stages?

Learning about negative exposure must have been all in a day’s work for a parent, so it seemed… Until it was realized that many years down the road, kids like the ones mentioned above would have been fed with hundreds of thousands of violent images and media illustrations portraying savage behavior. In retrospect, nurturing the acquiescent, subservient Singaporean child didn’t seem such a straightforward game anymore as external players i.e. video games and social media enter the fray.
Well, that was part of several reasons why more than a hundred parents, educators, students and teachers shared their Saturday morning with Kingmaker Consultancy in a seminar to delve extensively into “Children, Media Usage & Cyber Wellness”.

Led by Kingmaker Director, Poh Yeang Cherng, participants were invited into the fascinating world of Social Media and Facebook. They were  then escorted on a journey of surprising, intriguing insights from different angles and perspectives, both from the consumers and also the producers.

This was complemented with Dr. Douglas Gentile’s expertise in his pet subject, media effects on children and adolescents, as Dr. Gentile shepherded the discussion into the perennially problematic issues of video-games and addiction. Having matured in the age of technological enlightenment and progressively enthralling video-game development, it was clear that many of the participants identified with the problems from experience, both with children, youth and even their peers. These discussions definitely brought regenerated views and unraveled fresh facts for the parents and teachers. Safe to say, these groups of educators have augmented their arsenal in the perpetual warfare against media-reliance and gaming-addiction.

Media Sense & Sensibility was a timely and momentous platform for passionate parents and educators to step into the hot debate about children media usage. More importantly, public awareness and interpretation of media/cyber literacy were pronouncedly amplified through a short handful of hours spent with Kingmaker.

Kingmaker would like to thank all who joined us in the seminar, it has been a pleasure working with you to create greater understanding and advocacy for Cyber Wellness and Media Literacy!

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