Vetting Kids’ Entertainment Isn’t a One-and-Done

Most evangelical Christian parents are rightly cautious when it comes to the entertainment their young kids consume. With Disney essentially admitting it wants to normalize LGBT+ lifestyles in its children’s animated movies and Netflix churning out so much “family-friendly” LGBT+ content that it has an entire genre page devoted to it, Christian parents are understandably on alert.

While it’s good to be highly selective in terms of which streaming media options you deem acceptable for your kids (a difficult enough process), an increasingly important consideration must be the ongoing vetting of shows over time and across multiple seasons.

You might initially watch enough of a show like Peppa Pig to determine it’s fine for your kids to watch. What could be wrong with a pastel-animated series about a sweet family of polite pigs with adorable British accents? But a series initially deemed innocent can change over subsequent seasons. For example, in the seventh season of Peppa Pig—long after most parents had determined they didn’t need to think twice about it for their kids—the show caved to activist pressure and introduced its first LGBT+ family in the form of lesbian polar bears.

A similar thing happened with CoComelon. Geared toward viewers in diapers, the popular YouTube series became one of Netflix’s biggest hits, and many conservative parents (myself included) turned it on for their young kids without any concern. But last year the new spinoff CoComelon Lane featured an episode with a young boy dancing in a dress in front of his gay dads, who sang a song with the refrain, “Just be you!”

Farewell, MrBeast

It’s not just animated shows for preschoolers that can quietly go from “seemingly wholesome” to “insidious propaganda” over time. Consider the wildly popular YouTuber MrBeast. As the most-subscribed English-language YouTube channel in the world (incidentally, CoComelon is the second), MrBeast (a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson) is more than likely a YouTuber your child or your child’s friends follow. Yet as innocuous as his content seems, MrBeast (who grew up evangelical but now says he’s agnostic) is normalizing LGBT+ behavior for young viewers.

An increasingly important consideration must be the ongoing vetting of shows over time and across multiple seasons.

Consider longtime MrBeast guest star Chris Tyson. Last year, he came out publicly as a transgender woman, started hormone replacement therapy, adopted the name Kris, and documented the whole transition on social media. Married and a father before his transition, Kris is now separated from his wife as he pursues life as a woman.

Even if post-transition Kris appears less frequently on the MrBeast channel, he’s now a social media celebrity in his own right, with tons of crossover influence among the young audience endeared to MrBeast. Additionally, Donaldson has established himself as an ally and defender of Kris, publicly decrying “transphobia.” For kids watching MrBeast’s online presence going forward, messages of allyship and LGBT+ acceptance will likely be increasingly common.

5 Tips for Christian Parents

I’m a parent of young kids too, and the prospect of continually vetting the endless array of streaming media options and YouTube channels out there feels daunting, if not impossible.

It’s a big ask to challenge busy parents—who already stress about screen time and phones as gateways to all manner of intrusive bad influences—to continually monitor otherwise “trusted” purveyors of content. It’s neither realistic nor desirable for parents to peer over the shoulders of their kids 24-7.

Still, to be “hands off” after an initial endorsement is unwise in an age when unbiblical values are everywhere in the media landscape—even (and sometimes especially) in seemingly wholesome content geared at impressionable young people. Here are a few tips for how Christian parents can stay vigilant.

1. Periodically watch with your kids.

Let’s be honest, parents. It’s nice to be able to turn on an “approved” show or YouTube channel and peacefully go about your to-do list, ensuring a brief moment of peace in the household. But from time to time, be sure to watch with your kids—especially if it’s a new season or episode of a familiar show. These periodic check-ins will help you notice when something starts to feel off with a show, like the gradual change in Chris Tyson’s appearance that was evident for regular viewers of MrBeast.

2. Lean into like-minded community.

No parent can watch every minute of every show. But if you build a community of trusted, like-minded parents who are all on guard against toxic media influences on children, you can collectively alert each other to problems. This underscores the importance for Christian parents of building relationships with parents in a similar life stage who hold your Christian values. Help each other protect kids from malforming media.

3. Follow Christian review websites.

If you have questions about the appropriateness of a particular show or YouTube channel, search online for Christian reviews. Focus on the Family’s Plugged In is a great resource. In 2020, they added reviews of YouTube channels to the genres of content they review (in addition to movies, TV, music, games, and books). I’d love to see someone develop an app or website solely devoted to evaluating media content across multiple seasons and years, to better catch the subtle shifts that might happen over time.

4. Follow like-minded influencers on social media.

I’m hesitant to recommend being on social media for any reason. But one benefit for parents is that if you follow like-minded defenders of conservative Christian values, you’re bound to hear quickly whenever a show like Peppa Pig or CoComelon takes a problematic turn. As much as these things can be culture war clickbait, the upshot is news tends to spread quickly and widely whenever kids’ media goes woke. “Under the radar” messaging shifts don’t tend to stay under the radar in the age of crowd-sourced discovery.

5. Don’t be hypocritical.

I often have to remind myself of this: we shouldn’t tell our kids to avoid content promoting unbiblical values if we make no effort to avoid watching grown-up versions of it ourselves. And “unbiblical values,” by the way, includes far more than LGBT+ advocacy; we should flag media that celebrates greed, vanity, narcissism, profanity, cohabitation, and other things the Bible condemns.

To be sure, there’s a difference between an adult’s and a preschooler’s capacity to discern the good and bad of pop culture. But if we put stringent restrictions on what our kids can watch but have an “almost anything goes” policy for ourselves, there’s a disconnect. Be concerned for the formative power of media on your soul too, and let that be part of the conversation with your kids. The whole family should strive, together, to avoid unhealthy media and seek out edifying stories.

Saying No Is Only One Part of Discernment

It’s one thing to never let your child watch something in the first place. It’s likely going to rankle them even more when you put the kibosh on their future viewing of a favorite series or channel. But your “no” is an opportunity to have fruitful conversations about knowing and loving biblical truth, even when it’s countercultural. Your “no” should spark conversation about what it looks like to practice wisdom and discernment as Christians in an age of entertainment overload.

Your ‘no’ is an opportunity to have fruitful conversations about knowing and loving biblical truth, even when it’s countercultural.

It’s a discernment that goes both ways: learning to better identify and avoid unhealthy media but also learning to identify and appreciate what’s edifying. That’s the good news about today’s vast media landscape: as glutted as it is with trash, there’s a greater-than-ever array of good, true, and beautiful narratives across all genres—though it’s sometimes harder to find. Saying no to the bad is only one part of our media discernment process, individually and collectively. We should also seek to say yes to the good—commending it, creating it, supporting it financially, and enjoying it together.

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