Q1: Kids and the Media

A: This issue -- the media’s impact on our children -- has long been important to me. Almost a decade ago, my husband and I hosted the Children’s Television Summit at the White House, and we worked for the passage of the Children’s Television Act. That law led to the implementation of the V-Chip in every new TV larger than 13 inches and mandated that broadcasters show at least three hours of educational and informational programming each week. Since 1999, I have called on industry leaders to create a uniform ratings system that would warn parents about sex and violence in movies, TV, video games, songs, and other forms of media entertainment to which children are exposed constantly. Right now, there are different ratings systems in each sector, and parents have a hard time understanding and using them.

Working with a bipartisan coalition of my Senate colleagues, I helped write the Children and Media Research Act to study the impact of electronic media on child development. This legislation would create the first-ever coordinated research center devoted to understanding the impact of media on our children. I also introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, which would prohibit any business from selling or renting a Mature, Adults-Only, or Ratings Pending game to a person who is younger than 17 years of age. The bill would help empower parents by making sure their kids can’t walk into a store and buy a video game that has graphic, violent, and pornographic content.

When I am president, I will build on this record. It is frustrating and troubling that, despite all the data we have that shows there is a clear connection between exposure to violence and increased aggression, we, as a society, have not come forward with a real, pragmatic response or solution to the problem.

A: Our culture should reinforce the good values parents try to teach their children, not undermine them. Throughout my career, I’ve spoken out about the importance of protecting our children from media content that threatens their well-being, and I will continue to speak about it as president.

A: It has to be a priority. It’s not just about raising our children, which is important enough in itself, it’s about maintaining America’s place in the world. As we speak, children in China, India, and across the developing world are training to take advantage of our new media landscape and become innovators and entrepreneurs on the world economic stage in ways that just weren’t possible 10 years ago. America must prepare our children to do the same.

To do that, parents need to teach our children good media judgment. The openness of the new media world must be seen as a resource as much as some see it as a threat. And we must teach our children to harness it. There’s a lot of media out there. Some of it is very valuable. We live in the most information-abundant age in history, and the people who develop the skills to utilize its benefits are the people who will succeed in the 21st century. But also lurking out there are the darker corners of the media world, from internet predators to hateful messages to graphic sex.

We know that with the pervasiveness of mass media today – the existence of so many means of communication that are so easily accessible all over the world – it’s very difficult to regulate our way out of this problem. And for those of us who value our First Amendment freedoms – who value artistic expression – we wouldn’t want to. The key as I see it is that parents need to be training our children to separate the good media from the bad. We must train our children to have good media judgment and media skills so that those 45 hours per week are productive instead of distracting. We need to teach them to be smart media consumers, to take advantage of the tremendous empowerment that our information access affords us while avoiding its pitfalls.

My administration would make it a priority to make sure our children use today’s media opportunities for good and not ill so that they remain competitive in the global economy. This means encouraging parents to turn off the TV and the video games when it’s necessary for children to focus on homework, giving parents the tools necessary to block inappropriate content when it is time to watch, and teaching parents and children to access and use the vast amount of valuable information that’s available to us through the media.

A: It will be enormous. As I have said and demonstrated throughout a lifetime in public service, our children are the future of our nation, and I will never stop working to make the next generation better than this one.

A: I want to clean up the culture that surrounds our kids by working with parents to limit their children's exposure to sex and violence and drugs. I want to subject child predators to "One Strike and You're Ours": tougher penalties for first-time offenders, including stiff mandatory jail time and lifetime GPS tracking.