Don’t Trust Netflix (or Disney) With Your Children
They should give you the same vibes as a creepy uncle.
One of the largest ways a father can abdicate responsibility is with the entertainment his children consume. We want shortcuts. We want well-laid-out rules so we don’t have to think. We want to stop paying attention for just one freaking second of the day so we can relax. We would rather not run the risk of investigation.
So anything rated Y7 is ok. Any movie rated PG and under is fine.
But is it?
Short answer: no.
Medium answer: you should not trust Netflix or Disney with your children.
Long answer:
Netflix has shows made “just for children” that are high in production values. They know the reason a big portion of their subscribers pays them money is to have cheap babysitters for their children.
The first season of these shows is usually innocuous. Some are great. Netflix knows that parents will probably only watch the first few episodes of a show to see if it’s appropriate. At the most, they will watch the first season.
And so Netflix saves its poison for later.
Let’s look at a few Netflix shows.
Three Netflix Examples
First, Voltron: Legendary Defender. My kids and I enjoyed this show. I grew up watching the original, and this re-imagining was great. At first.
Around seasons 4 & 5, however, it is made clear that Shiro, one of the main heroes, is gay. He left a lover back on earth. All of a sudden, everything is re-contextualized. Kids who pretended to be Shiro while playing were suddenly pretending to be a gay character.
This play-pattern is exactly what they want, and they hope parents do not notice.
The second show is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. I watched this one on my own to see what the chatter was about. Sure enough, the first season is innocuous.
In the second season, we learn that a main character has “two dads” and the cast goes to meet them. It made a great point to always emphasize that he had “two dads” for the rest of the show’s run, even when a character could have just said “parents.”
There was also a transgender stand-in (though it was a shape-shifting alien, so the line was grey there). There are also almost no normal relationships in the show. Most of the pairings are lesbian.
None of this is clear if you only watch the first season. It’s rated Y7, by the way.
The third show is Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. This follows a group of kids trying to survive on the island full of dinosaurs. Again, the poison is held back until the final season, when they create a lesbian relationship.
It’s not just an incidental event. For the rest of the show, all of the characters can’t stop talking about how awesome the hot new lesbian couple is. These two underage kids and their coupling is “the best thing to happen” out of the whole disaster.
The creators are 100% transparent about the lesson they want your kids to take away from the entire show. They save it for the last half of the last season because they know you’re probably not watching anymore.
Do not trust Netflix.
Don’t Trust Any of Them
Disney is not better. You can still delude yourself because they have such a backlog of content going back decades and decades. But make no mistake. They are pushing propaganda. Here is just a sampling from Disney Junior.
In fact, you shouldn’t trust any of the media-entertainment complex. They are deliberately trying to corrupt your children and train their affections. They depend upon parents being lulled into a false sense of security. Usually a safe bet, because most parents have a natural tendency to abdicate.
Do. Not. Trust.
It is quite a different thing if you intentionally decide to watch something with your children in order to talk them through it, to think critically, to question the worldview being presented.
But you should not allow them to just soak this stuff up like a sponge. Have both eyes open. Be prepared.
Companies are beginning to get bolder in their attempts to corrupt. Parents are getting lazier in their defenses. A dangerous combination.
Your discernment is not allowed to take a vacation. As a father, you cannot let down your guard. It is literally part of your job to always be paying attention.