While 2020 pushed more kids online due to the COVID pandemic, we anticipate that the trend of children’s increased screen time will only be amplified in 2021.
That leaves children even more vulnerable to being exposed to explicit content that Hollywood markets to them.
There is a growing wave of adult-targeted content that features children, sometimes as young as 9, 11, and 13 years of age, in sexually explicit, sexually exploitative situations.
Rather than learning from its #MeToo moment and reevaluating the messages and images that provoke or normalize sexual exploitation, Hollywood is not slowing down. During 2020, Hollywood marketed explicit programs such as PEN15, Euphoria, and Awkwafina is Nora from Queens to children; and has sexualized children in content such as Cuties, Desire, Baby, Big Mouth, Sex Education, and others. And apparently unsatisfied with mere screen-time exposure, Hollywood even partnered with Hasbro to market sexualized toys to children as young as 4 years old.
This disturbing trend must end.
To that end, I want to suggest several ways that both Hollywood and Washington can ultimately better protect children.
As the majority owner of Hulu, the Disney Corporation must adopt a policy against the sexualization of children, immediately halt production on programs such as PEN15, purportedly a coming-of-age series centering on seventh-graders that carries a deliberately provocative title and graphic, sexually explicit content, and refuse to air programming that glamorizes illegal sex between adults and children. How can Disney’s current course be reconciled with its decadeslong brand as a trusted source for safe, family-friendly entertainment?
Turning to Netflix, the streaming giant’s board of directors and shareholders must hold Netflix executives accountable for greenlighting content, such as Cuties and Big Mouth, that sexualize children for entertainment, all of which creates an environment that leaves children vulnerable to, even groomed for, sexual abuse.
The new executive leadership at AT&T should cease its corporate practice of profiting as a pornographic sewer pipe that delivers explicit, child-themed pornography via its DirecTV and HBO subsidiaries, and in its programming such as Euphoria. Instead, the company should return to its roots as a responsible corporate citizen.
The age-based TV content ratings system has failed the families it was designed to serve, even according to the Federal Communication Commission’s own review. The FCC must pick up where it left off and push for meaningful reform of the ratings system to benefit families. Streaming media platforms must adopt the same, improved rating system.
Turning to Congress, families must be given the opportunity to filter out explicit content from streaming media platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. As such, Congress must finally pass an update to the Family Movie Act of 2005.
The incoming Biden administration must commit its Justice Department to enforce obscenity and child pornography laws vigorously and prosecute entertainment companies that sexually exploit children for profit.
Because of social-distancing requirements under COVID, TV and movie production companies were reportedly required to be creative in their approach to on-screen intimacy. The entertainment industry must continue, even after social distancing restrictions are lifted, to be more judicious in how they depict intimacy on screen.
What will be the ultimate result if we don’t reverse this trend of sexualized content marketed to children? A generation of children who are desensitized to their own sexual exploitation; a more accepting sexualized culture; and programming standards that foment the appetites of sexual predators and pedophiles, such as Jeffrey Epstein.
We sincerely believe that these changes are within reach and would immediately result in the betterment of children and families across our nation. When Hollywood and Washington use their powerful influence for good, nobody is better. And there is no better cause than to lift up our youngest generation.
A former MGM and NBC executive, Tim Winter is the president of the Parents Television Council.
