It’s a proven fact that teens watch a lot of TV (although they tend to multitask more often now, browsing the web or listening to music while channel surfing). Is anyone concerned about the garbage they’re consuming with all the hours they spend in front of the screen?

A recent Levi’s commercial went farther than most. Two teens, a girl and a boy, undress in front of each other while the camera focuses on the unmentionable areas. There’s a slew of extremely suggestive dialogue, like “You’ve never done this before, right?,” “I’m scared” and “Don’t you trust me?” We learn at the end that they’re really just jumping off a pier into a lake, but by then the damage is done.

This commercial is part of the “Live Unbuttoned” campaign, which you can read more about in the Parent’s Television Council’s newsletter, and it’s not the only one of its kind. The entire campaign is highly provacative and the creator’s intentions is clear–to provoke temptation-laden thoughts and images and connect the Levi’s brand with the concept of an young, sexually active lifestyle.

If you’re not convined that this sort of stuff is all over TV, you can also read a recent article from the Baptist Press highlights a few more “worst of the worst” moments on broadcast TV.

The Levi’s campaign is terrible and enough to convince me to not buy any more jeans from them until they clean up their act. But it raises an even bigger question. How do you protect students from the garbage that’s everywhere on TV? Especially the younger and much more impressionable ones?

I’m starting to teach and encourage students to give up TV. There’s very little good to it, but a whole lot of bad. It’s a high call but there’s nothing but benefits. My wife and I haven’t watched much for several years and our relationship is much richer, with each other and with the Lord. The students I do know that have given it up are not socially akward or maladjusted because of it. In fact, most of them have an even stronger walk with the Lord now.

Why wouldn’t you teach and encourage your students to give up TV? What’s the best way to actually do it?

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