Letter to John McCain

Dear Senator McCain:

Although I currently do not reside in the state of Arizona, my family lives in Green Valley, I went to high school at Sahuarita High School and I will be moving to Phoenix upon my graduation from Brigham Young University this summer.  I am currently student in the School of Family Life at BYU.  My emphasis is Human Development.  This semester I participated in a class on Media and the Family.  Through the course of the class, many issues were presented raging from violent video games to sexualized advertisements to the miss representation of women in the media .  One of the issues that I believe is of extreme importance for the families of Arizona are the current rating systems.  I am writing this letter to express my concern for the current rating systems and to encourage you, as a United States Senator, to help modify the system.

The purpose of movie, video game and television ratings is to provide information on media content to parents that will allow them to make informed decisions about the media that their children use.  A rating system should also help parents protect their children from inappropriate content.  I am concerned that the current rating systems do not accomplish these goals. 

Currently movies, video games and television shows are rated differently.  In addition, the  people giving the ratings to different forms of media are not consistent.   Television programs are rated by the networks, movies are rated by the MPAA and video games are rated by the ESRB.  The lack of continuity is concerning.    It is difficult to understand what the different rating systems mean.  The parents of Arizona and the US as a whole are busy and many (more than 50%) do not use the rating system at all.  I believe that the rating system would be more widely used by parents if there was one uniform rating system, instead of our multiple confusing systems. 

Our current rating systems are age based.  For example, PG-13 ratings should indicate to parents that they should be cautious in allowing their children to view the movie, especially pre-teen children.   Unfortunately, these age based ratings have several problems.  First, they provide a forbidden fruit of sort for children.  Second, many parents do not agree with the ratings that movies are given.  Third, the rating system creeps, when I was a child the F-word was not allowed in a PG-13 movie, now a movie can have up to four uses of the F-word and still be given a PG-13 rating!  Finally, the current rating system does not account for what science has discovered about harmful media.  For example, there is a multiplicity of research indicating that violent media causes increased aggression.  But, the current rating system does not reflect that.

I have presented two problems with the current rating system, first that they are not consistent between different forms of media and second that the aged based system does not work.  I believe that a uniform, content-based rating system would better serve the parents of Arizona and the United States in general.   Instead of PG-13 movies and  T for teen games and TV-Y7 television shows parents need and want to know, if the move, game or TV show has violence, sexuality,  or swearing.  Having a uniform system will decrease the complexity of monitoring media.  Having a content based system will help parents evaluate media more intelligently to make informed decisions about the media use of their children.

As a future Arizona parent, I want our nation to have a rating system that will help me protect my children from content that is inappropriate and be able to help my children select media that is age appropriate.  With a new rating system, that is uniform across media types and content based, Arizona parents will be able to evaluate the movies, video games and television programs that their children watch and make informed decisions about what to allow.  This will only improve the lives of American children and thus improve the future of our country.   

Sincerely,

Bethany A. N. Cline

Brigham Young University Student