- It’s almost impossible today for parents to restrict children’s use of media.
- Two schools of thought:
- Children are naive and need to be protected.
- Children are savvy, so don’t restrict but empower them with media literacy.
- Assumptions:
- Children bring less real-world experience to watching media.
- Children are very eager to learn, especially in preschool and early elementary ages.
- Children have less experience with media features, like ads.
- By age 2, children:
- Recognize that what’s on TV is bounded inside the TV.
- Can start to learn from video.
- May or may not recognize ads.
- By ages 3-5, children:
- Realize what happens on TV doesn’t affect them.
- Learn as well from video representations as real life.
- By ages 6-8, children:
- Become more conscious of body image (both boys and girls).
- Have preference for peers (real and virtual).
- Branch out past TV to other forms of media.
- Attention, Comprehension, Retention
- Attention:
- Visual and auditory attention
- As kids get older, they can pay more consistent attention for longer
- Comprehension:
- Children develop a schema of the world in their heads.
- Things that break this schema are jarring for children, but over time they get better at incorporating new information.
- Retention:
- How much do children retain from a visual or auditory program?
- There are lots of contradictory results in correlations between TV and imagination.