Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six

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.

It’s 10 p.m. Do you know whom your kid is texting?

An article by Liz Perle on CommonSense.org, The Side Effects of Media, discusses a Kaiser Family Foundation report called Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds.

Perle, citing the report, points out:

  • Over the past 5 years, there has been a huge increase in media use – from nearly 6 1/2 hours to more than 7 1/2 hours today
  • Due to multitasking, kids pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes of media content into those 7 1/2 hours. Kids ages 8-18 spend more time with media than they do with their parents or in school.
  • Mobile and online media fuel these huge increases in media use
  • Three groups stand out for their high levels of consumption: preteens, African Americans, and Hispanics
  • Kids who spend more time with media report lower grades and lower levels of personal contentment
  • Parental involvement matters: Children whose parents set rules or limited access spent less time with media than their peers

Seven and a half hours a day almost equals the amount of time most adults spend at work. But these children consume media seven days a week, not five. During that 7.5 hours per day, the time they spend reading magazines dropped from 14 to nine minutes; reading newspapers dropped from six minutes to three.

Kaiser found: “Today the typical 8- to 18-year-old’s home contains an average of 3.8 TVs, 2.8 DVD or VCR players, 1 digital video recorder, 2.2 CD players, 2.5 radios, 2 computers, and 2.3 console video game players. Except for radios and CD players, there has been a steady increase in the number of media platforms in young people’s homes over the past 10 years (with the advent of the MP3 player, the number of radios and CD players has actually declined in recent years).”

Much of that media is moving into the bedroom, according to Kaiser. Kids report spending more time watching TV than using any other medium. Among 7th–12th graders, about four in ten (39%) say they multitask with another medium “most of the time” they are watching TV.

The researchers also say that in a typical day, 46% of 8- to 18-year‑olds report sending text messages on a cell phone. Those who do text estimate that they send an average of 118 messages in a typical day. On average, 7th–12th graders report spending about an hour and a half (1:35) engaged in sending and receiving texts.

But that’s not the only thing kids use smartphones for. Smartphones are rapidly becoming a media-delivery platform for this age group. Older teens report spending more than an hour a day consuming media via the cell phone alone (:23 for music, :22 for games, :22 for TV).

My take: These findings suggest that young Americans spend more time consuming media than they do eating, sleeping, or going to school. When I was growing up, the term “conspicuous consumption” referred to the clothes, cars and other things people bought to flaunt their wealth. One might say that among today’s youth, conspicuous consumption refers to the increasing ways that people devour information from smartphones. Seriously, parents need to set some limits for kids and teach them about media, just as they would teach them to drive. In the personal essay section of this blog, I describe (in sometimes painful detail) how different media can sometimes skew the way people make life-altering decisions.