Readers Write In #836: Why are we taking children to age-inappropriate movies?

By Ashwin Kumar

I’ve been grappling with a cultural phenomenon that both baffles and disturbs me:  the casual way in which children in today’s India are exposed to movies clearly not meant for them. Sometimes it shocks me, sometimes it makes me furious, and sometimes I just want to ask – “What are we thinking”?

Imagine a child,  wide-eyed, impressionable taken to movies that are anything but child-friendly. Films laced with violence, sleazy songs, steamy scenes, and grotesque horror. Think of the kind of B- and C-grade films that spill over with content too mature even for many adults.

Now imagine this child also being exposed to the same kind of stuff on home TV as well

What kind of emotional impact would this have on a child’s psyche? On the way they learn to view people, relationships, conflict, or even themselves?

Now here’s the twist: that child was me. Born in 1981, I grew up in a time when these experiences weren’t anomalies . They were just normal. I, like thousands of other kids of my generation, was casually taken along to films we had no business watching. Some of us were also exposed within families watching low grade hollywood movies on VCRs from the neighborhood rental video library. We didn’t question it. No one did.

And yet, many of us made it to adulthood and turned out “fine”… or so we think.

What’s unsettling is that this pattern hasn’t gone away. In fact, it continues in living rooms and multiplexes today often by those who are educated, well-informed, and seemingly aware.

Just the other day, a colleague proudly told me she took her seven-year-old to a Tamil film about a serial killer.

I’ve made a personal choice to shield my own son from age-inappropriate media. We stick to animated films, movies made for children and even  switch the channel during questionable TV scenes. Yet, he recently told me a classmate ( also 7 years old) has watched Squid Game and inquired what that was.

Am I being overly strict? Am I taking the moral high ground? Sometimes I wonder. Especially when my own friends, good parents otherwise make different choices.

I don’t have all the answers, but here are some possibilities:

Is there a lack of awareness about media ratings and content. Or maybe we’ve seen so much that nothing shocks us anymore.

Do they have no one to leave the kids with, so they come along. Or  is it the belief that “it doesn’t really matter,” or that kids will forget.

But even if some of those are understandable, I can’t help but wonder: is a movie worth more than a child’s emotional safety?

If knowledge is the problem, should we talk more about this? Should filmmakers, critics, or influencers like Baradwaj Rangan highlight it?

Or is this an uncomfortably personal space –  one that society has no business entering?

Here is my dilemma – even if I guard my child now, he’ll pick it up elsewhere. He can pick it up from friends or school chatter. So, is my effort even enough?

Society is too vast, too complex to offer easy solutions. And I certainly don’t have any.

All I have are questions  and a growing discomfort that we might be failing, collectively, to protect our children’s innocence. Not only innocence but our nation’s culture probably.

I am sharing these thoughts  not to judge, but to reflect. And very very happy to listen 🙂