Choosing Wholesome Entertainment For Your Family

As a young, Christian mama, I’m all too familiar with the struggle to find wholesome entertainment for my family.

On one hand, never before has such a large variety of movies, TV shows, music, video games, and books been available to us.

Since smartphones & tablets have been pretty much cemented into our culture, we can access most forms of entertainment right from the palm of our hands.

That said, there is an even greater need for personal and parental responsibility.

As easy as the access to mainstream TV shows and music is, it is just as easy to find content that is inappropriate, and even pornographic.

Simply put, most mainstream content is not the type of content that you want your family to have easy access to.

In my humble opinion, most entertainment today is highly inappropriate and definitely not something that I want my children watching. 

The easy access to these types of entertainment make it way too easy to make compromises with our faith,

However, it is possible to choose more wholesome entertainment for our families and stop settling for something less edifying simply for the sake of convenience.

Parental Controls

It’s important to familiarize yourself with the types of parental controls available on all of your home and personal devices.

Most electronic devices these days have options in their settings that give you control over the types of content that you can access.

So whether your family uses the television or tablet for their entertainment needs, there are systems in place to put you in control, and customize what can be accessed.

If you don’t want to go in and specifically lock out individual content, you can simply lock out access to the devices entirely.

This way they’ll require a password to even access them at all.

Controlling Music Choices

Apple, Amazon, and Google, provide the ability to purchase individual songs and albums to download.

However, the most popular way to enjoy music nowadays is through music streaming services.

That said, music streaming platforms such as Pandora and Spotify have mixed results with content filters.

While Pandora has a filter that removes music with explicit language, the stations may still play songs that have adult themes and situations.

Spotify doesn’t have a content filter, but you can save individual artists, albums, and songs to your library.

You could even make custom playlists for your kids to enjoy.

Spotify also has a large collection of Christian artists and other wholesome genres to choose from as well.

Another option is Kidz Bop. 

Kidz Bop creates kid-friendly versions of the biggest hits of today, and they are all sang by kids.

This is a great way to ensure that the music your kids are enjoying will have cleaner content than if they turned on a local radio station.

Wholesome Movie and TV Options

Sadly, it’s much easier to find movies and TV shows that have inappropriate content in them than it is to find wholesome entertainment with clean, family-safe material.

Even implementing the above suggestions involves a lot of hands-on work to pre-screen the content to ensure that it’s appropriate.

Pure Flix relieves you of a lot of the responsibility by exclusively offering a library of Christian and family-friendly movies, TV shows, documentaries, and educational content.

With the countless temptations to settle for mainstream media, it’s great to have something that allows you to plan family movie nights without the need to pre-screen potential options.

Smarter Screen Time

In addition to having more control over the types of content your family enjoys, you could also put limits on the amount of screen time that you allow.

Instead of handing your kids a tablet to keep them preoccupied, reserve screen time for more special occasions.

Consider rewarding your kids for finishing their chores or doing well in school with some screen time.

Introduce them to different hobbies and activities that you grew up with.

You could also implement a family game night with games that are both new and classic.

This will make cuddling up on the couch and watching a movie together much more memorable than leaving the TV on in the background while doing other things.

As simple as it may seem, enjoying wholesome entertainment as a family is the easiest way to ensure that the your family isn’t consuming inappropriate content.

And what is more wholesome than spending time together as a family?

Trust me, you are not alone in the struggle of finding wholesome entertainment in this day and age.

However, there are a lot of options out there to make the struggle a little bit easier.

What are some of your favorite family friendly movies and TV shows? 

I’m always looking for more wholesome options for my family!