Children and the Media

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Describing the role of media in the lives of children around the globe is a daunting task. First, media diversity is increasing rapidly. The most recent entry is the personal computer and the Internet, but other media are appearing or changing shape as well. Access to the various media, mass and otherwise, also varies substantially from country to country and region to region. Despite the proliferation of media, this analysis of media trends affecting the lives of children will focus almost exclusively of television. The reason should be obvious: television as a truly mass media reaches more children and, according to research, has a greater impact on the lives of these children and their families and communities than any other medium. It is also the most intensively studied medium, although significant gaps in our knowledge concerning the social effects of exposure to certain types of television content still exist. Other media have been scrutinized by researchers, including music (Christenson & Roberts, 1998) and video games (Federman, Carbone, Chen, & Munn, 1996), but these bodies of work remain fragmented and somewhat inconclusive. Unfortunately, few studies exist in which the entirety of children’s media “diet” is studied. One recent exception is an analysis of children’s media use conducted in the United States by Roberts, Foehr, Rideout, and Brodie (1999), which included television, movies, videos, video games, books, magazines, computer games, internet chat rooms and web sites, and music. This nationally representative survey of American youth found that children and adolescents in the United States are immersed in media. They live in homes that are replete with media devices—on average, three television sets, two VCRs, two CD players, three radios, three tape players, a computer, and a video game system. Average media exposure for young children (ages 2–4) is quite high—over four hours per day, and media exposure increases to just over 8 hours per day for 12–13 year-olds before dropping off somewhat during the teen years. Television remains the dominant media for most children, although listening to music becomes an important activity for teens. One of the more startling findings from this study concerns the degree to which children’s media use