September 16th, 2022

Children & Mass Media

  • 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.