Are You Captivated by Your Computer? a Review

This entry is part 17 of 27 in the series 2014 Homeschool Reviews

This thought has cropped up in the back of my mind recently a time or two. Do I spend too much time on the internet? So it’s great that we got to review the DVD Captivated by Media Talk 101.

Captivated is a 107 minute long Documentary/ Movie expose, by Producer and co-director, Phillip Telfer, discussing the online world and the hold the internet, video games, and social networking sites have taken on the general population.

Philip Telfer started his company Medial Talk 101 in 2001 which aims to teach about being a discerning Christian in the consumption of media.

“Media and Entertainment was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to spiritual growth and family health in our nation.” ~ Phillip Telfer

Captivated takes a closer look at the effect online media has had on some Christian individuals and families and the steps they took to reverse the hold.

The video is something the whole family could benefit from watching. And those who are too young to understand all that is being said may benefit from the actions their parents take to reign in the media diet.

You can purchase your own copy of Captivated for $16.95 with Free Shipping. There are also several other options such as a group discount, BOGO (just pay shipping), a Study Guide, and other bundles.

How did we use the video?

I tend to multi-task while watching anything (because I feel so useless just sitting there) so I was actually attempting to get some craft work done while this documentary was on.

But that didn’t last long. This video was, wait for it…. captivating. And later in the movie I discovered why I couldn’t do two things (adequately) at once.

Everything got put away and I just sat down to watch and listen.

So far I’ve watched the video myself several times. We also watched it as a family and my husband wants to watch it again too.

Captivated starts off with a little interesting history tidbit, then moves into About Captivated or the background about how the movie came to be. There are then interviews with various professors, authors, doctors, and researchers. And about half and hour in we start to meet real people who were so affected my multi-media, felt they needed a change, and made that change happen. These interviews are interspersed with more interviews from the researchers and professionals.

What We Thought About Captivated

I was really impressed with the movie. It was an unashamedly Christian perspective on what we, as believers, should be asking ourselves about what we are looking at when it comes to videos, games, movies, etc.

You might think to say that this movie is anti-media but I disagree. Simply by their intro into the documentary, which shows the many social media platforms that the movie has been shared across, I feel the producers are asking us to be mindful, as Christians, of how often and how we use media (i.e. – social media, internet browsing, movies, video games, etc.)

News to me was the background history on how the telegraph was also as revolutionary to it’s time as the internet world is to ours. I call myself a semi-history buff but I seemed to have missed this little episode. Gonna dig up some reading on it now, there was a book cited in the movie. It seems that people who had formerly been comfortable communicating in messages across the telegraph were tongue tied when meeting up in person. Sound familiar?

While there are no set guidelines in this video on what to look at and what not to look at when it comes to media I appreciated that they pulled no punches on this documentary.

Most interesting for me was Professor and Author Mark Bauerlein who cited a research study of youth using digital tools. The researchers discovered a huge number of youth who sleep with their cell phone under their pillows…and on, waiting for text messages.

Well I found this tiny tidbit touched a chord because as a high school student my best friend used to do the same thing with the cordless phone. They were semi-new back then and she would fall asleep with it in her hand many nights.

Then there was the interview with a research doctor in Seattle who studies brain growth in children and how much they are growing and taking in the first few years of life. A time to be most careful what you expose your children to. How too much media will shorten their attention spans and possibly cause them to have attention issues when older.

While I’ve always been very picky about how much and what my daughter watches the interviews with experts, and the real stories from individuals and families was inspiring enough to make me take a more discriminating look at what I, personally, partake in when it comes to online activities.