Children and the media

Question 1

What are children’s interest in TV according to age?

Answer 1

Infants (0-18m): attracted to light and sound but short attention span

Toddlers (2-3y): Can extract some meaning but struggle to distinguish between fantasy and reality

Preschool (3-5y): Understand that TV is symbolic but limited fantasy vs real abilities (ie cartoons not real, actors are), difficulties with motives, still attracted to fast moving characters etc

Primary school (6-11y): Better understanding of motives and the fact that TV is unreal (ie actors following a script)

Question 2

What’s the evidence that early TV watching cause attention problems?

Answer 2

Christakis, Zimmerman: The more TV watching at year 1-3 the higher risk of attention problems at age 7
- Because of overstimulation?

Problems: Casualty? Could Attention problems lead to TV watching? (unlikely at not present at early age)

Question 3

What are the supposed effects of TV violence on children? (+ evidence)

Answer 3

• Child may become less sensitive to pain of others (Evidence: child slow to intervene when other kids fight + less physiological arousal when watching fight)
• Child may become more fearful (E: TV children think more violence occurs in society)
• Child may be more likely to behave aggressively (Bobo doll - observational learning)

Question 4

What’s the longitudinal effect of aggressive TV - does it really cause aggression?

Answer 4

Causal difficulties, but some correlations found from watching aggressive TV age 9-aggressive behaviour age 19

Aggressive video games same effect
Prosocial content same positive effect

Question 5

What’s the findings of TV’s effect on cognitive development?

Answer 5

3 year longitudinal study: frequent viewing of informative programmes –> better performance on academic achievement (especially 2-3years old)
- Frequent viewing of general-audience programmes worse academic performances