Monitoring kids' TV viewing is tougher today than in the long-ago days of three networks, limited choices and mostly G-rated programming.

Tracy Dreslinski of Rochester Hills, Mich., is a case study. It was her 15-year-old daughter Katie's fascination with "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" that really rang the chimes of her parental concern.

"That's the one where we said, 'Let's yank the cable,' " Dreslinski recalls. "Katie was always sneaking downstairs to watch 'SVU,' " a grim adult crime drama that focuses on violent sexual-assault cases. So out went the cable hookup to Tracy and Scott Dreslinski's basement television.

Now the family's only cable-connected television is the one with a 32-inch screen in the family room. And that one's connected to a digital video recorder so the family — which includes Katie, 11-year-old Emily and 4-year-old Ben — can avoid commercials and watch favorite shows on their own schedule.

"Our household rule is that the kids can only watch TV when they're watching with me, unless it's a tape of one of our 'approved' programs," says Dreslinski, 44, a self-employed technology consultant and Web designer.

The simpler life

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," with its rewarding of deserving households, is considered family-friendly at the Dreslinski home, which has pulled the plug on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." ABC

"There's so much terrible stuff on TV today, it's scary," Dreslinski says. "So we set out to limit the amount of time they watch. If we watch together, it doesn't count against their own TV time, which is supposed to be one hour a day. But they probably watch more, especially after school. I'm not a Nazi about it."

A new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18- year-olds," is especially sobering. The national survey of the media-consumption habits of 2,000 3rd-through-12th-graders found that "the total amount of media content young people are exposed to each day has increased more than an hour (from 7 hours, 29 minutes to 8 hours, 33 minutes) over the past five years."

Playing by the rules

While most of the increase comes from the use of video games and computers, television — the mass entertainment medium once labeled the "plug-in drug" — still occupies plenty of children's daily attention. And 53 percent of the young people surveyed for the study said their families "have no rules about watching TV."

Of the 46 percent who indicated their parents do have TV rules, just 20 percent said the rules are enforced "most" of the time.

Children in homes where TV rules are enforced have, on average, two hours less daily media exposure than those in homes without rules, the study concluded.

Parents who enforce TV rules are sometimes fighting a losing battle, says Mary Ann Watson, a professor of television and film at Eastern Michigan University.

"Now they're up against an avalanche of stuff that any parent with any sense would not want their kids watching," says Watson, citing everything from the raunchy cartoon satire "South Park" to the gross-out reality show "Fear Factor."

Competing with cable

Increasingly, with the major commercial networks like ABC, CBS and NBC desperate to compete with adventurous, anything-goes cable series like "Deadwood," "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck," the boundaries of coarse language, sexual content and violence have been expanded.

"The difference between even 10 years ago and today is pretty remarkable," Watson says. "The sexual innuendo in almost every sitcom? It's ubiquitous."

The networks have also expanded offerings of graphic adult crime dramas, a trend that began when "NYPD Blue" debuted in 1993 and continues today with the forensic gore on three editions of "CSI."

Of course, different families have different standards for what is acceptable.

In eye of beholder

Ratings showed that many found no problem with "Friends," for instance. That was a huge hit that frequently featured sexually laced comic banter. The show became a magnet for many viewers as young as 10.

And there has been an explosion of reality TV series in recent years, including occasionally taste-challenged network shows like "Big Brother," "Fear Factor" and "The Simple Life," which attract some school-age viewers.

"The thing with entertainment is that it's like the environment," Watson says. "A lot of it is cultural pollution. So to say, as some do, that 'If you don't like it, change the channel' is like saying 'If you don't like air pollution, just stop breathing.' "

But American popular culture — be it TV shows, movies, music, comic books or video games — can be thrilling to one person and exasperating to another. And to some, who believe in the American notion of exuberantly free expression and creativity, saying "If you don't like it, change the channel" sounds perfectly reasonable.