8.10: Media Influences on Children

Media Technology and Socialization

Media's changing landscape has a profound affect on socialization. Media technology includes screen media (television & motion pictures), print (magazines & books) audio and multimedia inclusive of computers and phones. As discussed earlier in the chapter, it is an agent of socialization that impacts beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Media has the ability to influence our political views; our tastes in popular culture; our views of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community; and many other beliefs, behavior and practices. This was evident in recent years during the chronosystem shift employing new technology utilized during COVID- 19. Children and families became even more reliant on media technology for information, socialization and remote learning due to school closures. The proliferation of digital media platforms and apps became the lifeline to society for sharing news and connecting the global world.

Theories of Media Socialization

The primary theory regarding Media influence on children can be traced to the discussion of Bandura Social Learning Theory. According to his theory, children learn by observing models in media and all it's forms. Children will imitate and role play what they see, especially if the role model has prestige and social influence. This influence can be both positive and negative. For example, a child watching Sesame Street may learn about diversity, collaboration, and other valuable positive social skills. Conversely, a child actively engaging in violent video game content may also learn aggressive an antisocial behavior. More will be discussed on this subject later.

There are myriad theories about how society, and media will progress. Functionalism sees the contribution that technology and media provide to the stability of society, from facilitating leisure time to increasing productivity. Conflict theorists are more concerned with how technology reinforces inequalities among communities, both within and among countries. They also look at how media typically give voice to the most powerful, and how new media might offer tools to help those who are disenfranchised. Symbolic interactionists see the symbolic uses of technology as signs of everything from a sterile futuristic world to a successful professional life.

Because functionalism focuses on how media and technology contribute to the smooth functioning of society, a good place to begin understanding this perspective is to write a list of functions you perceive media and technology to perform. Your list might include the ability to find information on the Internet, television’s entertainment value, or how advertising and product placement contribute to social norms.

Media Consumption

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\):Children using tablets. (CC BY-NC 4.0; Allison Shelley, EDUImages)

The current generation of children are digital natives- meaning they have never know a time without digital technology. Entertainment, education, and socialization opportunities have been literally at their fingertips 24 hours a day. Although media estimates vary, current research from Common Sense Media (Rideout & Robb, 2020), offer these insights on media consumption of children related to age, income, race, and type of preference media:

• Children from birth to age 8 use about two and a half hours (2:24) of screen media a day. Daily use ranges from 49 minutes among those younger than 2, to two and a half hours (2:30) among 2- to 4-year-olds, and more than three hours (3:05) among 5- to 8-year-olds.
• More than a third (34%) of children age 8 and younger watch online videos every day, up from 24% three years ago. Nearly half (46%) of 2- to 4-year-olds and more than two-thirds (67%) of 5- to 8-year-olds have their own mobile device (tablet or smartphone), making online viewing even more accessible.
• Children in lower-income households spend an average of nearly two hours a day more with screen media than those in higher income homes (3:48 vs. 1:52).
• Both the frequency and amount of time spent reading among children from lower-income households have increased. The proportion of children in lower-income households who are daily readers—that is, who read or are read to every day—has increased by 10 percentage points over the past three years, from 40% to 50%.
• For the first time since we began the census, online video viewing dominates kids’ screen time. Our youngest kids are spending 39 minutes a day watching online videos on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, up from only 19 minutes in 2017. The growth in mobile device access is driving this increase, as nearly half of 2- to 4-year-olds and more than two-thirds of 5- to 8-year-olds have their own tablet or smartphone.

Types of Media

At the beginning of the 20th century, neither television nor the Internet existed. There were no commercial radio stations, no roadside billboards, no feature films, and certainly no smartphones. People were dependent on newspapers and magazines for their knowledge of the outside world. In the last generation during the digital explosion, media saturates all aspects of life from children's bedrooms to schools to senior living communities. Mass media have allowed for more shared social experiences, but new media now create a seemingly endless amount of airtime for any and every voice that wants to be heard. Advertising has also changed with technology. New media allow consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues and cause companies to be more innovative and intrusive as they try to gain our attention.

Traditional Media

Traditional media encompasses all the means of communication that existed before the Internet and new media technology, including printed materials (books, magazines, and newspapers), broadcast communications (television and radio), film, and music. New media, on the other hand, includes electronic video games and entertainment, the Internet, and social media. Although different forms of mass media rise and fall in popularity, it is worth noting that despite significant cultural and technological changes, none of the media discussed throughout this text has fallen out of use completely.

The publishing industry has also suffered from the effects of new technology (although newspaper readership has been in decline since the introduction of television and radio). When newspapers began developing online versions in response to competition from cable television, they found themselves up against a new form of journalism: amateur blogging. Initially dismissed as unreliable and biased, blogs have gained credibility and large readerships over the past decade, forcing traditional journalists to blog and tweet in order to keep pace (which allows less time to check that sources are reliable or add in-depth analysis to a story). Traditional newspapers are also losing out to news aggregators such as Google News, which profit from providing links to journalists’ stories at major newspapers without offering financial compensation to either the journalists or the news organizations. Many newspapers have adapted to the Internet out of necessity, fighting falling circulation figures and slumping advertising sales by offering websites, blogs, and podcasts and producing news stories in video form. Those that had the foresight to adapt to the new technology are breathing a sigh of relief; a 2010 Pew Research Center report found that more Americans receive their news via the Internet than from newspapers or radio sources, and that the Internet is the third most popular news source behind national and local television news.

New Media

Initially conceived as an attack-proof military network in the 1960s, the Internet has since become an integral part of daily life. With the development of the World Wide Web in the 1980s and the introduction of commercial browsers in the 1990s, users gained the ability to transmit pictures, sound, and video over the Internet. Since then, it is almost impossible to overstate the influence the Internet has had on media over the past four decades. Media has become a primary socialization factor utilizing cinema, radio, television, video, computer, Internet, mobile communication which has influenced a generational cohort during crucial developmental tasks. Different types of media matter at each stage, for example a teenager may feel excluded from their peer group without a smart phone. On the other hand, technology keeps evolving over time and offers increasing access to media and to a larger variety of media content to our youngest children. Novel forms of access through new digital devices shape the current media habits of new generations.

Advantages of Media

The availability of media for children provide them with access to formal and informal educational programming, low cost entertainment and leisure, and a fully connect life with peers and family. These benefits will be explored here.

The saturation of media technology for children has offered well-designed television programs, such as Sesame Street, which can improve cognitive, literacy, and social outcomes for children 3 to 5 years of age. Evaluations of apps from Sesame Workshop and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) also have shown efficacy in teaching literacy skills to preschoolers. These high quality programs can be learning tools (Santomero, 2018). Digital books, which are books that can be read on a screen, often come with interactive enhancements that, research suggests, may decrease child comprehension of content or parent dialogic reading interactions when visual effects are distracting. Parents should, therefore, be instructed to interact with children during eBook reading, as they would a print book (Radesky, J., & Christakis, D., 2016).

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): A computer screen shows a second-grade teacher leading a lesson for her remote learning students. (CC BY-NC 4.0; Allison Shelley via EDUimages)

In the era of COVID -19, access to computers and technology supported informal and formal learning for most children. In a 2021 Census Bureau survey (McElrath, 2020), 93% of households had a child learning online. As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the rise of online learning where teachers provide instruction to students remotely using various digital platforms. A growing number of research studies suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, take less time, and has helped keep children in school.

In addition to speed, reach, and cost, online media delivery enables a wider range of voices and perspectives on any subject. Through nontraditional media such as blogs and Twitter, people can put their own personal slant on current events, popular culture, and issues that are important to them without feeling obliged to remain neutral. A study by the Pew Research Center (2010) found that nontraditional media sources report on a wider variety of stories than traditional media, enabling individual sites to develop their own personality and voice. The study also discovered that these online sources focus on highly emotional subject matter that can be personalized by the writers and shared in the social forum. By opening up blogs and social media sites to online discussion or debate, bloggers enable readers to generate their own content, turning audiences from passive consumers into active creators. In this way, knowledge becomes a social process rather than a one-way street—the blogger posts an opinion, a reader comments on the blogger’s opinion, the blogger then evaluates the reader’s comment and revises his or her perspective accordingly, and the process repeats itself until an issue has been thoroughly explored. Many bloggers also provide links to other blogs they support or enjoy reading, enabling ideas with merit to filter through various channels on the Internet.

Challenges of Media

Disparity and Digital Divide

Although media technology use has become ubiquitous in our culture, some children do not have access to the opportunities of media, causing them to miss out on educational and economic opportunities. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (Radesky, J., & Christakis, D., 2016), approximately 37% of lower income households do not have a computer. This is significant, at time when remote learning has become essential, and given the achievement gaps for low income children, disproportionately comprised of Black and Brown children, this failure to stem the divide could be devastating. Society not addressing this gap between people who can afford personal computers and access to the web and people who cannot is known as the digital divide. These disparities mean that people with lower incomes and educational levels are at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing educational opportunities, information, news, and computer-related skills that might help them navigate society.

The 2020 pandemic demonstrated how access to technology and use of technology influences the ability of children to acquire to learning virtual settings. Some teachers held synchronous video-conference sessions. Yet, accessibility to learning experience for children was not equitable. Some children may not have had the opportunity to participate in the synchronous sessions with their classmates and viewed recordings of the read aloud experience. Other students might not have access to an appropriate device or wifi. A family’s economic capacity to mitigate and successfully utilize technology varied greatly, and resulted in uneven access to educational opportunities throughout the pandemic. For example, some students may have access to a device, but might be sharing this access with siblings or other family members who also need them. Parents might be able to allow a child to use their cell phone for a portion of the day, but few adults can navigate a whole day without access to their own cell phone. The younger the age of the child, the less likely they might be to have access to their own device.

The digital divide is even more prominent between developed and developing countries. In nations such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, the government permits little or no access to the Internet. In other countries, such as Mexico, Brazil, and Columbia, poor telecommunications infrastructure forces users to wait extremely inconvenient lengths of time to get online (Bahia & Delaporte, 2020). As discussed, socio economic status and race intersect with the digital divide, and so does gender. According to the same report, girls and women are less likely to have access to internet and computers as well. To learn more about the global digital divide visit United Nations Conference on Trade and Development to see which countries are most affected.

Health Factors

In an ongoing controversy, the media is often blamed for youth violence, mental health issues, obesity and many other of society’s ills. The average child sees thousands of acts of violence in media platforms. Media often seemingly extol sex violence, including violence against women. Advertising can greatly influence our choice of soda, shoes, and countless other products. The mass media may also reinforce racial and gender stereotypes, including the belief that women are sex objects and suitable targets of male violence. Here is a review of recent data on the health impact of media on children.

• In 2021, internal research from Facebook suggested social media made mental health issue increase (Wells et al., 2021).
• Common Sense Media's (Rideout & Robb, 2020), research indicates that people of color are underrepresented in movie and TV roles across platforms, and when they are represented, they’re often stereotyped. For example, despite being 18% of the population, Latinos only make up 5% of speaking film roles. Characters of color in shows most watched by children age 2 to 13 are more likely to be depicted as violent, and women of all ethnic-racial groups in adult programming are more likely to appear in sexualized roles.Moreover, watching the gender stereotypes embedded in video increased boys' and girls' stereotype confirmation (Wille et al., 2018).
• Zillmann et al. (1994) found the average child sees 12,000 violent acts on television annually, including many depictions of murder and rape. More than 1000 studies confirm that exposure to heavy doses of television violence increases aggressive behaviour, particularly in boys.
• Television viewing makes a substantial contribution to obesity because prime time commercials promote unhealthy dietary practices (Ostbye et al., 1993)
• Today, media has become a leading sex educator for children. Between 1976 and 1996, there has been a 270% increase in sexual interactions during the family hour of 2000 hours to 2100 hours (Crespo et al., 2001).

Digital Literacy

Advertising

Advertising to children and teenagers via various forms of media has occurred for decades, with expenditures of $3.2 billion for non-digital and $900 million for digital advertising in the United States in 2018. Children and teenagers encounter advertising through television, radio, print media, the Internet, and their mobile phones. Advertising can take many forms, including images, videos, and games that advertise specific brands. Along with a growing number of online predators misrepresenting themselves on social networking sites, the Internet is responsible for a lot of other types of misinformation circulating the web. Unless children are able to distinguish between reliable, unbiased sources and factual information, they may find themselves consuming inaccurate news reports or false encyclopedia entries. Even so-called reliable news sources are subject to occasional errors with their source material.

Teaching children digital literacy is crucial. Children and parents need to understand how technology influences and sometimes exploits them. These mechanisms often are invisible, so digital citizenship curricula will need to help children understand. According to Rideout & Robb (2020) the concerns around digital literacy are listed below.

• Free digital products aren’t really “free” unless they are made by a nonprofit group.
• Cookies (browser data trackers that follow our “crumbs” as we go from site to site) and device identifiers (IDs hardwired into smartphones and tablets, which can be traced back to users) often are collected by platforms and sold to companies that collect data on purchases, gameplay or browsing histories.
• Individuals’ video viewing behavior on sites like YouTube can indicate aspects of users’ mental health, race, sexuality, political leaning or other characteristics.
• Platforms used by schools (such as Google Classroom, ClassDojo) collect children’s data about test scores and behavior, which need to be protected.
• Algorithms that sort people into categories of consumers carry bias and can reinforce disparities.
• Users are more complicated than these algorithm categories, and they need to be aware of what tech platforms know about them and how this informs what messages they get (e.g., anti-vaccine misinformation to anxious new parents; alcohol and marijuana marketing to minority and low-income populations).

Research on children’s understanding of television advertising suggest that children have limited ability to understand the intent of advertisers, consider Piaget's developmental stages. Marketers use many approaches such as the use of animated characters, interactive games for product using reinforcement strategies, which can be seen here with Barbie. Marketers also embedded products in TV, video games and movies (think of the Coke cup next to American Idol).

The proliferation of advertising and misinformation based on media companies algorithm is makes children particularly vulnerable which is why some countries, such as Sweden and Brazil, have laws banning advertising to children younger than 12 years. US advocates for children urge stricter regulations to protect children and ban commercials and misinformation targeted to young children. Regulations on television advertising have not yet been updated for the modern digital environment.

While Tumblr and Facebook encourage us to check in and provide details of our day through online social networks, corporations can just as easily promote their products on these sites. Even supposedly crowd-sourced sites like Yelp (which aggregates local reviews) are not immune to corporate shenanigans. That is, we think we are reading objective observations when in reality we may be buying into one more form of advertising.

Facebook, which started as a free social network for college students, is increasingly a monetized business, selling you goods and services in subtle ways. But chances are you don’t think of Facebook as one big online advertisement. What started out as a symbol of coolness and insider status, unavailable to parents and corporate shills, now promotes consumerism in the form of games and fandom. For example, think of all the money spent to upgrade popular Facebook games like Candy Crush. And notice that whenever you become a “fan,” you likely receive product updates and special deals that promote online and real-world consumerism.

Note

With the fast pace changes occurring in media, what macrosystem policy changes would you advocate for to protect children in a vulnerable developmental stage? What about in the microsystem level, what should parents or caregivers do to protect children?

Media Regulations

Privacy

Within Bronfenbrenners Macrosystem is the idea regulations related to media. Regulations have been focused on advertisement as discussed above and privacy concerns. Online privacy concerns also extend from individuals to their dependents. In accordance with the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, school districts must consider and control certain elements of privacy on behalf of students, meaning they cannot require or encourage students under age thirteen to provide personal information. Likewise, online platforms such as Instagram do not let children under the age of thirteen register for their sites. And where children are registered by their parents, sites like YouTube and, more recently, TikTok issue controls to prevent inappropriate portrayals by children or inappropriate behavior by other members. For example, YouTube often disables comments on videos produced by children (Moreno, 2020). TikTok added privacy and protection methods in 2020, but in early 2021 was hit with allegations of violating child safety and privacy guidelines.

Although schools and companies are required to take steps to lower risks to children, parents and guardians are free to make their own choices on behalf of their children. Some parents avoid showing their children on social media; they do not post pictures, and ask family members to refrain from doing so (Levy, 2019). On the other end of the spectrum, some parents run social media accounts for their children. Sometimes referred to as "sharents," they may share entertaining videos, promote products through demos or try-ons, or post professionally produced photos on behalf of clothing companies or equipment makers. A child's (even a toddler's) role as an influencer can be financially lucrative, and companies making everything from helmets to dancewear have taken notice (Allchin 2012).

The responsibility for regulating children's media is traditionally been the responsibility of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Communications Act of 1934 replaced the Radio Act and created a more powerful entity to monitor the airwaves—a fiver-member Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to oversee both radio and telephone communication. It has no jurisdiction over print media, mainly because print media are purchased and not broadcast. The FCC requires TV and radio stations to apply for licenses, granted only if stations follow rules about limiting advertising.

There has always been marketing to young children, even prior to 1980, but the amount was very limited and confined. With the growing purchase power of children restrictions on advertisers and companies to protect children has lessen in the past 50 years. Between 1975 and 1985, deregulation public policy removed limitations on advertising to children and stripping congress' power to to protect children from marketers, leaving companies free to advertise to children as they see fit, and allowing them to use the strategies above. At the same time, children's media inclusive of TV shows has expanded. There are upwards of 500 channels running at a 24 hour cycle providing entertainment content to children such as Nickelodeon, Disney, Netflix, Disney streaming, Sprouts and more. As a result of deregulation, society witnessed media content created for the sole purpose of selling a toy, essentially turning kids’ shows into program-length toy commercials.

Net Neutrality

The issue of net neutrality, the principle that all Internet data should be treated equally by Internet service providers, is part of the national debate about Internet access and the digital divide. On one side of this debate is the belief that those who provide Internet service, like those who provide electricity and water, should be treated as common carriers, legally prohibited from discriminating based on the customer or nature of the goods. Supporters of net neutrality suggest that without such legal protections, the Internet could be divided into “fast” and “slow” lanes. A conflict perspective theorist might suggest that this discrimination would allow bigger corporations, such as Amazon, to pay Internet providers a premium for faster service, which could lead to gaining an advantage that would drive small, local competitors out of business.

The other side of the debate holds the belief that designating Internet service providers as common carriers would constitute an unreasonable regulatory burden and limit the ability of telecommunication companies to operate profitably. A functional perspective theorist might point out that, without profits, companies would not invest in making improvements to their Internet service or expanding those services to underserved areas. The final decision rests with the Federal Communications Commission and the federal government, which must decide how to fairly regulate broadband providers without dividing the Internet into haves and have-nots.

Note

With the increased growth of media-linked toys and products, there has been a rapid growth in children’s consumption. Do you think we should be concerned about this?

Do you think these is a link between the increasing frequency to use licensed characters to sell junk food and other products to children?

References

Allchin, D. (2012). Teaching the Nature of Science Through Scientific Errors. Wiley Online Library.

Bahia, K., & Delaporte, A. (2020). Connected Society: The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2020. GSMA.

Crespo, C. J., Smit, E., Troiano, R. P., Bartlett, S. J., , Macera, C. A., Andersen, R. E. (2001, March). Television Watching, Energy Intake, and Obesity in US children: Results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988–1994. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med.

McElrath, K. (2020, August 26). Nearly 93% of Households with School-Age Children Report Som Form of Distance Learning During Covid-19. United States Census.

Ostbye, T., Pomerleau, J., White, M., Coolich, M., McWhinney, J. (1993, November 1). Food and Nutrition is Canadian "Prime Time" Television Commercials. Canadian Journal of Public Heath.

Pew Research Center. (2010, May 23). New Media, Old Media:The Blogosphere.

Radesky, J., & Christakis, D. (2016, November 1). Media and Young Minds. American Academy of Pediatrics.

Rideout, V., & Robb, M. B. (2020). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight. Common Sense Media.

Santomero, A. (2018). Preschool Clues. New York: Touchstone.

Wells, G., Horwitz, J., & Seetharaman, D. (2021, September 14). Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show. The Wall Street Journal.

Wille, E., Gaspard, H., Trautwein, U., Oschatz, K., Scheiter, K., & Nagengast, B. (2018). Gender stereotypes in a children's television program: Effects on girls' and boys' stereotype endorsement, Math Performance, motivational dispositions, and attitudes. Frontiers.

Zillmann, D., Bryant, J., & Huston, A. C. (1994). Media, children, and the family: Social scientific, psychodynamic, and clinical perspectives. Hillsdale, N.J: Erlbaum.

Attributions

Sociology: Brief Edition – Agents of Socialization by Steven E. Barkan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Cornerly, T. R., Holmes, K., Tamang, A. L. (2021, June 3). Introduction to Sociology (3rd ed.). Openstax.