Tag Archives: children

Steubenville Rape and Social Media: All the Internet’s a Stage

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Shakespeare begins Act II, Scene VII of As You Like It with the immortal words, “All the world’s a stage.” In this play, he catalogs the seven stages of a man’s life. Among them is the competitive phase of life which Shakespeare calls “the soldier.” At this age, people seek to gain recognition, even though it may be short lived and at the cost of their own lives. As Shakespeare puts it, they are:

Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.

These nine words sum up the millions spawned by the Steubenville, Ohio, rape trial of two high school football players. They were found guilty of raping a teenage girl who was reportedly so drunk that she could not consent to sex, although the defense disputed her state of consciousness at the trial.

This is not the first time things got out of control at a party that mixed minors with alcohol. So what made this case so notorious? In my opinion, the case made national headlines because:

  • Teens at the party posted videos and pictures of the event on social media sites [1]
  • Those who witnessed the rape made hundreds of tweets about it, yet did nothing to stop it or report it to authorities [1]
  • Prosecutors used this trail of online evidence to convict the teens [2]
  • An online video showed males joking about the victim callously and remorselessly, exemplifying what some call a “culture of rape” and others call “cultural rot” [3]
  • Two girls reportedly threatened on Twitter to kill the victim and may now be prosecuted separately for their threats [4]
  • These teens claimed that they did not think they were committing crimes
  • Social media, rivals of mainstream media, were at the heart of the affair

It was a Shakespearean tragedy in every sense of the phrase and a perfect media firestorm. The case involved a small town, teenagers, football, rape, alcohol, the Internet, YouTube, Twitter, ruined lives, rival mediums, outrage and more. Even hackers got in on the action when Anonymous posted the video. See Anonymous Leaks Horrifying Video of Steubenville High Schoolers Joking About Raping a Teenager ‘Deader than Trayvon Martin’. (Warning: This is about ten minutes long and emotionally difficult to watch.)

The video above, even though it focuses primarily on one male, clearly shows that several were competing with each other to describe the events of that night in the most degrading terms possible. That the video was later posted online and used as evidence in a felony trial makes Shakespeare’s words seem prophetic.

“Seeking the bubble reputation, even in the cannon’s mouth.”

As I’ve been writing these 522 words, the number of search results reported by Google on “Steubenville rape” increased by more than one million (from 219,000,000 to 220,000,000). The Internet truly has become the stage where tragedies like this play out.

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[1] http://prinniefied.com/wp/steubenville-high-school-gang-rape-case-firs/

[2] Twitter, YouTube Make Steubenville Case Even More Complicated

[3] Patricia Leavy, PhD: Boys Seeking Celebrity Prom Dates, Steubenville, and How the Media Still Don’t Get it

[4] Two charged with threats in Steubenville rape case – CBS News, Girls Threaten Steubenville Rape Accuser On Facebook, Twitter; 2 Face Charges In Ohio

Impact of Media on Child Health

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I have long felt that in the Information Age, media are like the air we breath and the water we drink – necessary for life, but sometimes toxic and often unhealthy. Browsing this morning, I found this group: The Center for Media and Child Health (CMCH).

videogameAt Children’s Hospital Boston, the Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health, this group is dedicated to understanding and responding to the effects of media on the physical, mental, and social health of children through research, translation, and education.

They have found that young people spend more time using media—TV, movies, music, computers, Internet, cell phones, magazines, and video games—than engaging in any other single activity except sleep. Their site is a treasure trove of scientific research related to these topics.

According to the Center for Media and Child Health:

The media that children use and create are integral to their growing sense of themselves, of the world, and of how they should interact with it. These pervasive, persuasive influences have been linked to both negative health outcomes, such as smoking, obesity, sexual risk behaviors, eating disorders and poor body image, anxiety, and violence, and to positive outcomes, such as civil participation, positive social behavior, tolerance, school readiness, knowledge acquisition, and positive self-image. For any given child, which effects occur depends largely on the media’s content, the child’s age, the context in which the child uses media, the amount of media the child uses, and whether that use is active and critical.”

 

To create positive rather than negative outcomes, they propose five Five Cs, which I summarize below:

  • Control time
    Limit media use to an amount appropriate for your child’s age.
  • Filter Content
    All media educate. Some teach healthy lessons, others harmful.
  • Influence Context.
    Where, when, how, why, and with whom kids use media can enrich or harm them.
  • Teach Critical thinking
    It’s essential for healthy development.
  • Create media mastery
    Show kids how to think about media they use, instead of passively consuming it.

My Take

To kids, media represent a way to explore the world, stay connected, share experiences, identify with groups, and show off. They’re a badge of belonging. They’re a gateway to information, entertainment and temptation.

Research shows that kids consume up to seven hours per day of media (ten and a half hours if you factor in multitasking). Nothing will influence the type of adults that kids become more than you and the media they consume. The wise parent will teach kids to use media time wisely. I read that in a fortune cookie, so I know it must be true.

Screen Fixation and Attention Deficit Disorder

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While searching for information about the relationship between ADD and different types of monitors, I came across a touching story in the New York Times. Published in 2011 by Perri Klass, M.D., the article titled “Fixated by Screens, but Seemingly Nothing Else” began with the story of boy whose teacher thought he had attention deficit disorder. The teacher urged the boy’s mother to have him tested: “He can’t sit still … He’s always getting into trouble.”

The mother felt her son could not have attention deficit disorder because he could sit for hours concentrating on video games. The physician had heard it all before. He said, “Sometimes parents make the same point about television: My child can sit and watch for hours — he can’t have A.D.H.D.”

“In fact, a child’s ability to stay focused on a screen, though not anywhere else, is actually characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are complex behavioral and neurological connections linking screens and attention, and many experts believe that these children do spend more time playing video games and watching television than their peers.”

But researchers, the article continues, are still trying to determine whether the screen fixation is a cause or an effect of attention disorders.

Some researchers, according to Klass, feel that flickering screens may reward the brain by releasing the neurotransmitter dopamine and therefore attract children with deficit disorders. The brains of these children may be deficient in dopamine and they are, in effect, self-medicating with video.

Other researchers fear video may cause deficit disorders. Klass says, “Some studies have found that children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop attention problems later on.”

He cited a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics. It found that viewing more television and playing more video games were associated with subsequent attention problems in both schoolchildren and college undergraduates. The theory goes something like this. In video games, the need to keep responding rapidly in order to win creates hyper-alertness that makes the real world seem under-stimulating by comparison.

My Take

Regardless of the cause/effect question posed above, these studies show that exposure to television and video games can affect brain chemistry over the long term. These visual mediums have the power to affect how we feel, how we think, and how we interact with those around us. Tomorrow, I will write about several affective disorders related to television usage that I have personally observed and documented.

Impact of TV Violence on Sleep

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In the weeks following 9/11, I saw the World Trade Towers fall dozens, if not hundreds, of times in televised replays. The effect on my sleep was immediate. I slept restlessly, had nightmares, woke frequently, and felt anxiety. I had several friends/clients in the Towers that day. While the nightmares faded over time, the other effects did not. For the better part of a decade, I woke up at least once virtually every night.

Somehow a pattern had formed. I saw a sleep doctor. He told me to stop watching TV before bedtime, that TV stimulated the brain when it needed to relax. But I wondered whether there was something more going on – whether the violence of those images was somehow still disturbing my sleep and whether others were similarly affected.

A 2011 New York Times article by Anemona Hartocollis, 10 Years and a Diagnosis Later, 9/11 Demons Haunt Thousands, confirmed my suspicions. The article discussed the impact of the event on people who had experienced it firsthand. The article chronicled a list of serious maladies ranging from chronic sleep disturbances and lung cancer to post-traumatic stress disorder. But could exposure to the event on television also cause sleep disorders?

A 2004 study called Television Images and Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After September 11 by Jennifer Ahern, MPH; Sandro Galea, MD; Heidi Resnick, PhD; and David Vlahov, PhD, in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease showed that people who viewed more television images of the attacks in the seven days after 9/11 had a higher probability of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The authors wrote, “Television may merit consideration as a potential exposure to a traumatic event.”

Another study published in 2007 in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Following Media Exposure to Tragic Events: Impact of 9/11 on Children at Risk for Anxiety Disorders) found the amount of time children spent viewing 9/11 coverage on television predicted an increased risk of PTSD symptoms. The authors (Michael Otto, Aude Henin, Dina Hirshfeld-Becker, Mark Pollack, Joseph Biederman, and Jerold Rosenbaum of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School) conclude, “Media viewing of tragic events is sufficient to produce PTSD symptoms in vulnerable populations such as children.”

Outside of the context of a tragic event like 9/11, I began to wonder whether the general level of violence one sees on TV can affect sleep. Most studies have focused on how the medium itself stimulate the brain. But I found this study published In 2011 in The Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics by Michelle M. Garrison, Kimberly Liekweg and Dimitri A. Christakis titled Media Use and Child Sleep: The Impact of Content, Timing, and Environment. The authors determined that media content and viewing time correlate significantly with children’s sleep quality.

FamilyTV

The authors had 612 parents keep media diaries showing what, when, where and with whom their children watched TV for a week. They also correlated the diaries with a sleep questionnaire and found:

“Children with a bedroom television consumed more media and were more likely to have a sleep problem. In regression models, each additional hour of evening media use was associated with a significant increase in the sleep problem score (0.743 [95% confidence interval: 0.373–1.114]), as was daytime use with violent content (0.398 [95% confidence interval:0.121– 0.676]). There was a trend toward greater impact of daytime violent use in the context of a bedroom television (P  .098) and in low-income children (P  .07).”

The authors concluded that violent content and evening media use were associated with increased sleep problems. However, they observed no such effects with nonviolent daytime media use. To foster better sleep patterns, they advise parents to control their children’s watching of programs with violent content and to reduce evening media use.

My Take

These studies show sleep disturbances can be related to televised violence. They also raise some corollary questions, “What are the long term health consequences of constant exposure to images of violence? Does the rise in the use of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs correlate at all to increased viewing of violence through media?” A report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2011, by Laura A. Pratt, Ph.D.; Debra J. Brody, M.P.H.; and Qiuping Gu, M.D., Ph.D., found that “From 1988–1994 through 2005–2008, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States among all ages increased nearly 400%.” To be clear, the report notes that the authors did not study specific causes for the increase, i.e., with media useage. But I can’t help but wonder what, if any, correlation there is. Numerous studies now show that people spend more time multitasking with media than sleeping.

How a Mouse Click Can Affect Future Employability

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My parents drummed into me the importance of “Buyer beware.” Today’s parents need to teach kids a variation on that phrase, “Browser beware.”

One of my younger employees once told me that he preferred digital media to mass media such as television because he didn’t have to suffer through commercials not targeted to him. However, the technology used to target digital ads can harm people who may not be aware of what’s going on (and he certainly didn’t fall into that group).

In 2011, The Journal of the American Association of Pediatrics published a study called Clinical Report—The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families. The report by Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, Kathleen Clarke-Pearson and the Council on Communications and Media cataloged both the negative and positive influences that social media can have. The report makes a powerful case for media literacy education.

The authors define social media as any Web site that allows social interaction
These include social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Second Life; video sites such as YouTube; and blogs.

JobInterviewThe authors point out that many social sites gather information on the person using a site and use that information to give advertisers the ability to target “behavioral” ads directly to an individual’s profile. They also discuss how this information can come back to haunt kids later in life:

“When Internet users visit various Web sites, they can leave behind evidence of which sites they have visited. This collective, ongoing record of one’s Web activity is called the “digital footprint.” One of the biggest threats to young people on social media sites is to their digital footprint and future reputations. Preadolescents and adolescents who lack an awareness of privacy issues often post inappropriate messages, pictures, and videos without understanding that “what goes online stays online.” As a result, future jobs and college acceptance may be put into jeopardy by inexperienced and rash clicks of the mouse.”

Browser beware!

Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six

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The Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six is a comprehensive survey of research stretching back 50 years. It was prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation by the Center on Media and Child Health, Children’s Hospital Boston in 2005. It explores the history of research about the effects of electronic media on children while their minds are still developing and when they are most vulnerable, i.e., before they fully develop critical thinking skills and become conscious of how media can affect them.

Even the youngest children in the United States use a wide variety of screen media. As the Kaiser Family Foundation notes in its introduction to the study, “Some children’s organizations have expressed concerns about the impact of media on young children; others have touted the educational benefits of certain media products. This issue brief provides a comprehensive overview of the major research that has been conducted over the decades on various aspects of young children’s media use, and also highlights the issues that have not been researched to date.”

FatKidEatingTopics examined include:

  • Health
  • Aggression
  • Violence
  • Pro-social media
  • School Achievement
  • Attention and Comprehension
  • Fear Reactions to Frightening Content
  • Parental Intervention
  • Learning
  • Reality
  • The Family Environment
  • Response to Advertising
  • Computer Use

In regard to advertising, research has shown that children in this age group are unable to understand its persuasive intent. This raises questions about unfair manipulation that could affect a child’s later growth and trajectory in life. For instance, among the studies cited, research showed that:

• The likelihood of obesity among low-income
multi-ethnic preschoolers (aged one to five
years) increased for each hour per day of TV or
video viewed. Children who had TV sets in their
bedrooms (40% of their sample) watched more TV
and were more likely to be obese (Dennison, Erb &
Jenkins, 2002).
• Children (average age of four years) preferred
specific foods advertised on video more than
children who had not seen the foods advertised on
video (Borzekowski & Robinson, 2001).
• Body fat and body mass index increased most
between the ages of four and 11 among children
who watched the most TV (Proctor, Moore, Gao,
Cupples, Bradlee, et al, 2003).

This survey of research concludes with a call for more research in specific areas. One of those is “media interventions.”

            “In order to mediate the effects of media on young children, interventions such as media literacy programs and parental education curricula should be designed and evaluated. There have been almost no media literacy programs designed for zero- to six-year-olds. The United States is far behind other countries in this regard; Australia
and the Netherlands begin teaching media literacy in
preschool and continue it through higher education.
Research in older children indicates that media literacy
may be the most effective intervention with which to
counter negative media effects. Media influences on young children are not only strong and pervasive, but also potentially controllable – especially in the early years when parents determine the majority of their children’s media exposure.”

 

My next post will deal with media literacy programs which these researchers say may be the most effective form of intervention.

Cell Phones Affect Kids’ Sleep: Need for Digital Curfews

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A personal anecdote: I am writing this at 3:00 a.m. after being woken up by a text message on my wife’s cell phone (which she fell asleep with) at 1:38 a.m. The message was from our son who lives two time zones west of Houston. No emergency. He just wanted to tell my wife that he received something she emailed.

I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. So I started wondering if other people had this same problem, i.e., being awakened by electronic gadgets. To the google search bar! The Center on Media and Child Health lists it as a hot topic.

In Perspectives on Parenting, Karen Jacobson, MA, LCPC, LMFT and Lauren Bondy, MSW, suggest setting a digital curfew.

“The playground for tweens and teens today is electronic,” they say. “kids today are roaming, playing, forming relationships, testing limits, making mistakes, exploring, experimenting, and forming their identities and values in online digital spaces.”

Studies [1][2][3] show that sleep is interrupted when teens receive texts at night. Likewise, homework is interrupted and children become distracted when they receive notifications of a new chat messages, texts, or emails. To avoid a daily battle, the authors suggest that parents make a time when all media are off limits into part of the routine. Other recommendations the authors make include:

  • Involving kids in establishing a media plan for their entire day, and agree on weekday and weekend hours.
  • Allowing social media time only after homework is done or during homework breaks.
  • Asking kids, “What’s the best place to charge your cell phone and keep it from distracting you?”

 ParentTeenCellPhoneCropped

Cell phones are rapidly becoming an integral part of kids’ lives. According to research by C&R Research, 22 percent of young children own a cell phone (ages 6-9), 60 percent of tweens (ages 10-14), and 84 percent of teens (ages 15-18. And cell phone companies are now marketing to younger children with colorful kid-friendly phones and easy-to-use features. According to market research firm the Yankee Group, 54 percent of 8 to12 year olds will have cell phones within the next three years.

These studies and observations suggest that growing and uncontrolled cell phone use among children can have a detrimental impact on their sleep which, in turn, can make them tired the next day and affect their ability to learn in school.

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1. Irregular bedtime and nocturnal cellular phone usage as risk factors for being involved in bullying: A cross-sectional survey of Japanese adolescents by Tochigi, Mamoru;Nishida, Atsushi;Shimodera, Shinji;Oshima, Norihito;Inoue, Ken;Okazaki, Yuji;Sasaki, Tsukasa, 2012

2. Adolescent use of mobile phones for calling and for sending text messages after lights out: Results from a prospective cohort study with a one-year follow-up by van den Bulck, Jan, 2007

3. Text messaging as a cause of sleep interruption in adolescents, evidence from a cross-sectional study by van den Bulck, Jan, 2003

via CMCH.tv.