Electronic Childhood
Ellen
Wartella (Ph.D., University of Minnesota
1977), dean of the College of Communication at the University of Texas-Austin
and 1985-86 Center fellow, adapted this essay from her remarks at The
Cologne Conference, Germany, June 1994.
Media
Studies Journal
Volume 8, Number 4, Fall I994
(a publication of The Freedom
Forum.)
MY
CHILDREN ARE LIVING an electronic childhood. And they are not alone.
Channel surfing on cable, computer games, videos, e-mall and Internet
are features of a world often alien to adults, but as familiar as the
backyard to my sons, 11 and 6. As parents, teachers and television producers
observe our children in this electronic world, we are both awed by their
agility with media that sometimes intimidate us, and fearful of the
ways those new media are changing, the nature of children's lives and
the society in which they grow up.
Indeed,
concerns about the social effects of media on children and youth are
echoed everywhere, and this shared worry can only accelerate as the
marketplace for media products becomes ever more global and homogenized
across national boundaries. Critics complain that young people spend
too much time with media products that are too violent, commercialized
and of inappropriate quality. But proponents of television, as well
as champions of some of the newer interactive technologies such as video
and computer, argue that such media enhance children's education.
Although
several countries (such as France and Canada) limit importation of foreign
films or television programs, a global cultural marketplace now exists
in which media fare created in say, Ireland, are marketed elsewhere
in Europe as well as in the Americas, Asia and Australia. Throughout
much of the global marketplace, the standards of aesthetic tastes or
expectations for television dramatic content, films, popular music and
videos are also increasingly homogenized. Like the areoles of old, cultural
products, created and distributed by multinational media conglomerates,
now traverse industrialized democracies. And such a global international
media market finds some of its most avid audiences among children.
What
is this international electronic media environment for children?
In
both Europe and the United States, children are heavy users of television
and, increasingly, of all television programs accessed via the television
set (i.e., videos, computer games). Children's television habits in
Europe and the United States have been found to follow a similar pattern:
children are early users of television, showing a steady increase in
viewing time from about age 2 until middle childhood (about age 8 or
9). Between the ages of 8 and 12, television viewing seems to level
off at about two-and-three-quarter hours per day, and then actually
starts to decrease through adolescence, with the least amount of television
viewing occurring among 14- to 19-year-olds, who watch about two hours
per day.
But
the TV set now makes available more than terrestrial television channels
for children to watch: Cable, satellites and video-cassettes have now
made considerable inroads into children's viewing of over-the-air television.
In the United States, more than 60 percent of households now have cable
and nearly three-quarters have VCRs. The most recent statistics I have
seen on video-game usage suggest that one out of every three U.S. homes
has a video game. Personal computers and CD-ROMs are less common, being
newer, more expensive technologies, but are increasingly widespread
every year.
In
Europe, video and satellite penetration is more variable across countries.
In 1988-89, for instance, the proportion of Italian households with
a video recording machine was 19 percent, but 54 percent in Great Britain.
And, as in the United States, in Europe households with children are
more likely to own a VCR than are households without children. One British
industry report found in I990 that 22 percent of the population aged
7 and over had watched video during the previous week. The frequency
of satellite TV viewing lies somewhere between terrestrial TV use and
video use.
WITHOUT
QUESTION, children today grow up in much more media-rich households
than their parents' and, importantly, with more uses for the television
set.
What
do we know about what children watch on television? It's mostly adult
fare. Children do not by any means watch only programs intended specifically
for them. Horst Stipp, director of social and development research at
NBC, recently pointed out that U.S. commercial television executives
are fully aware that America's children prefer situation comedies to
children's educational programs. Stipp says most of the programs that
U.S. children watch are neither specially created for children nor shown
in what is known as children's TV time-- Saturday mornings.
A second
noteworthy characteristic of children's viewing is that it roams across
a range of live-action and animated fare that appears on cable or in
syndication on local stations, not just on America's four commercial
over-the-air networks. A third factor worth noting is that not one educational
children's television show appears in the top-viewed programs, although
if we looked at the ratings for children aged 2 to 5 separately from
those aged 6 to 11, "Sesame Street," a widely acclaimed educational
program for preschoolers, would make that list.
These
data are not unique to the United States. When examining the listings
of the top 10 programs for children in Great Britain, Switzerland, West
Germany, France and the Netherlands, the most popular shows are comedies,
game shows and soap operas. While preschool-aged children may start
watching television by attending to children's programs, by the time
they reach age 6 or 7 they watch more adult fare than children's programming.
CLEARLY,
PART OF THE EXPLANATION of children's viewing preferences may be the
range of choices offered. Certainly, in the United States, the diversity
and variety of entertaining fare specifically produced for children
is limited, even with a proliferation of media and channels. In a 1990
study, I examined the variety and diversity of children's programming
available in one Midwestern community. The question raised was whether
children had access to both over-the-air broadcasts, cable and videocassette
rentals of children's programming and whether that content included
a range of genres for children to watch. In particular, I was interested
in gauging the extent to which children's offerings provided them with
informational or educational options (a particular concern of American
public policy-makers).
We
found that while the children in this community lived in homes with
a variety of media available, including cable television and videocassette
recorders, neither traditional broadcast television nor videocassette
recorders provided much diversity of content for children. There were
few informational or educational children's shows on broadcast television
at the time, and most of those were dominated by toy-related animated
programs-"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and the like. Similarly,
most of the video rental fare was either adult-oriented or the same
animated programs. The major exceptions to these were recycled Disney
movies and some public broadcasting educational series such as "Sesame
Street." Only households with cable were offered both variety and
diversity of children's programming: Channels such as Nickelodeon, a
commercial enterprise, offer a range of programming genres, quiz shows,
game shows, drama, animated cartoons and variety shows, thus adding
to the diversity of children's program options.
Since
that 1990 study, there is now more competition in production of children's
television and more program diversity in the United States. Much of
this has been prompted by passage of the Children's-Television Act of
1990, intended to increase the amount of educational and informational
broadcast television programming available to children. Two of its provisions
are important for the. future of American children's television: that
broadcasters must provide television programming that serves the educational
and informational needs of children, and that, if they do not, broadcasters
may be held accountable in license reviews every five years; second,
the Act established a National Endowment for Children's Educational
Television, a vehicle through which new programming ventures can be
funded.
In
addition to that important step, Congress in summer 1993Z enacted the
National Ready to Learn Act, which sets the goal of having all U.S.
children prepared and ready to learn when they enter public school,
and includes the use of television as part of the mandate. This year,
money was funneled into public television to achieve this goal. Indeed,
a few months ago, the U.S. public television system announced renewed
commitment to air an expanded block of nine hours a day of educational
and informational children's programming this fall.
It
may well be that the United States is approaching a renaissance in television
programming for children. Even this year, one can point to a much larger
diversity of programming genres for children on U.S. commercial television
than was present a few years ago, in particular, renewed interest in
science programs and quiz and game shows. The impact of privatized television
on Europe's far more developed tradition of public broadcasting is less
clear, although increasing amounts of U.S. animated children's programming
now appear worldwide, so content improvements in the United States may
have a positive global impact.
CONCERN
ABOUT WHAT CHILDREN see and assimilate from television and videos is
rooted in an assumption that the impact of television and other media
is heavily determined by their content. Two aspects of content that
have received most research and comment involve the violence and commercialization
of much of commercial TV fare.
Violence
in the media has been a topic for public debate and academic research
since the film era in the 1920s, at least in the United States, where
media violence has always seemed of more concern than in other areas
of the world. In part this may be because American cultural products
seem more violent than those of other countries. Yet, increasingly,
media violence also transverses the globe, as the recent British outcry
over "video nasties" demonstrates. Several major reviews of
the predominantly U.S. research on violence effects have been issued
over the past several years, converging on the conclusion that media
violence is one environmental factor contributing to the maintenance
of a stable pattern of aggressive behavior in children and adults. However,
these studies conclude, media violence does constitute a threat to public
health.
Partly
because of such research and partly because of the political pressures
to "do something" about violence in American life, U.S. cultural
industries are responding. This year, the networks and the cable industry
announced mechanisms to self-regulate their violent content, including
the establishment of independent monitors to measure the amount of violence
on television. In May 1994, the National Cable Television Association
announced that it would contract with a consortium of four universities
under the auspices of Mediascope (a not-for-profit organization in Hollywood
organized to bring academy and industry people together around social
issues of concern to conduct TV violence monitoring over the next three
years.
The
second issue of public concern about television-commercialization -is
exacerbated by the rise of privatized television in Europe and elsewhere
in competition with public broadcasting, which has raised the stakes
of a commercialized childhood. Around the world, for example, children
now have access to the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (or
"Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles," as they are known in Great
Britain) via television, video, books, interactive video games, movies
and a whole host of toy products, comic books, clothing and children's
furnishings- Programs that link television characters to toy products-termed
program-length commercials in the United States, are of increasing concern
around the globe.
The
fact that television program characters are created with an eye toward
their marketing potential as toys or other consumer items is only part
of an entire marketing strategy that has evolved over a decade. Starting
from the premise that children like the familiar and recognizable, the
creation of children's programming (once based on children's books or
films, is an elaborate manifestation of providing children with something
familiar. Today, simultaneous production of a children's TV show and
its toy-related characters is an assumed part of the package, with the
relationship between media and merchandise reinforced via product licensing
(such as for backpacks, sheets, towels, clothing and lunch boxes), cereal
products (e.g., breakfast boxes featuring "Ghostbusters" and
"The Addams Family"), character appearances at shopping malls
and holiday events, movie appearances ("Batman: The Animated Movie"
is based on Fox's kidshow, which in turn was issued after the success
of the live-action [adult] "Batman" films), and, of course,
a host of new-technology toys including arcade and home video games,
story tapes and home-computer software. These characters and products
range widely around the world -- it is difficult to escape purple dinosaurs
or talking fire engines anywhere.
WHAT
IS EMERGING IS unique to the new electronic age, what Marsha Kinder
in her book on video games calls a "supersystem: a network of interrelated
narrative texts or media products constructed around a pop cultural
figure or group of figures." In addition to the Turules, there
are the characters from "Star Wars" movies, the Simpsons,
the Smurfs, the Muppets of "Sesame Street,: Batman and, born again
through Hollywood's magic and eagerness to recycle proven vehicles,
the Flintstones. Sometimes, pop cultural icons are real people too-Madonna,
Michael Jackson and even the (apparently) dead Elvis Presley. "In
order to be a supersystem," writes Kinder, "the network must
cut across several modes of image production; must appeal to diverse
generations, classes, ethnic subcultures, who in turn are targeted with
diverse strategies; must foster 'collectibility' through a proliferation
of related products; and must undergo a sudden increase in commodification,
the success of which reflexively becomes a 'media event' that dramatically
accelerates the growth curve of the system's commercial success."
Indeed,
the notion of "interactive" media is a double entendra - not
only are users interacting with the images on screens, but one media
outlet is interacting with others in one large consumerist' dance. And
children-even preschoolers-are at its center, by being educated to become
part of the consumer group of children around the world (and certainly
at their preschools and in their neighborhoods) who together can play
with the Turtles, Barney or other cultural icons.
If
I am engaging the old arguments about marketplace constraints on the
quality of cultural products, I do so with an awareness of the higher
stakes involved in global markets saturated with a handful of cultural
supersystems. The concern, of course, is that marketing will outweigh
any concern with aesthetics. Moreover, I fear we are developing a generation
of cynical consumers.
Beyond
the pitfalls of commercialization, a media system of interrelated products
has implications for the potential of new electronic media to enhance
children's lives. Indeed, there are high hopes that the active nature
of children's interactions with video games and computers, as well as
the other newer electronic audio and video products, will help children
learn about the world and themselves.
Many
of the production principles that have governed children's television
are being carried over into other interactive media. And no wonder.
Many of the same production houses are moving into multiple technologies
for delivering media products and, as discussed, cultural icons across
media are often part of the same supersystem. These principles are rooted
in observations of what engages and interests children as media users.
One
principle that should be incorporated into production of all children's
media is that repetition is a key to both educating and entertaining
children. Just as children like to have the same stories read to them
over and over, they enjoy the same television programs and videos. Repetition
is not just important but essential to video games, since practice leads
to mastery. Repetition both entertains and hones new skills: In video
games as in life, once children learn to master one sort of obstacle,
whenever it arises again, they are prepared.
A second
principle is that children want recognizable characters and stories.
And the supersystem of cultural production ensures that children can
find favorite characters across a range of media technologies. In the
future, recycling children's stories from television to video to CD-ROM
to computer games and back again is likely to be the norm, not the exception.
As discussed, this principle is very effective in developing marketing
strategies for children, but only in the short term: Supersystems of
image marketing quickly lead to cynicism among the older child audience
members.
A third
principle is that gender differences survive into this new electronic
world. The common assumption among U.S. children's TV producers, for
instance, is that boys like fast-paced action, adventure and superheroes,
while girls take to fantasy, soft, cuddly characters and slower-paced
television. Action, and often violence (good vs. evil, heroic feats,
technical wizardry and male-dominated characters) are all marks of boys'
television best typified by the Nina Turtles' success. Girls' programming
is dominated by sugary-sweet programs about cute, doll-like characters
who demonstrate good pro-social qualities of caring and helpfulness
(e.g., Ariel in "The Little Mermaid"). This expectation of
male bias towards action and superheroes has carried over from movies
and television the video-game industry. As Kinder reports, the vast
majority of video-game players are boys; when surveyed, both girls and
boys as young as 5 and 6 see video games as more appropriate for boys
than girls. Manufacturers see that, Of course, so it is no surprise
that current video-game products are more boy-oriented than girl-oriented,
which clearly may have repercussions if such interactive media do, as
some observers claim, have an impact on children's cognitive development.
Fourth,
an implication of new media for children is that the nature of the visual-spatial
interactivity of media such as video games and computers may have a
positive impact on cognitive development. Psychologist Patricia Greenfield,
for instance, suggests in her book Mind and Media that video-game playing
does offer important cognitive benefits. The very structure of video
games fosters the use of an inductive reasoning process, provides a
means of verifying hypotheses, improves eye-hand coordination and the
processing of visual information from multiple perspectives and helps
develop skills in iconic-spatial representation. But video games tend
to be based on boy-oriented television and video narratives; if video
games are a gateway into greater comfort with computer use, then girls
quite clearly are disadvantaged in entering the increasingly computerized
work world. When transplanted to newer technologies, the world of children's
television may have serious consequences for future generations of workers.
On
the other hand, there is something of a blurring of age distinctions
in children's use of interactive technologies. I have observed boys
as young as 3 and 4 rally round my 11-year-old when he's playing with
his video games. In many ways, video games, computers and other new
media can draw children and adolescents together around their interactive
technology; sometimes only parents feel left out. Part of this observation
is rooted in the way television is programmed for children. If, for
instance, children "watch up"-that is, watch the programs
that attract older siblings--it is no surprise that programmers seek
to develop shows for an elastic age group of 5- to 13-year-olds. One
beneficial result of this blurring of age-group interest in new media
is that it may indeed lead to children of different ages, perhaps even
with adults, gathering round interactive technologies together. I know
that my children and their friends like to play video games together,
the group watching while one tries his hand at the game. Contrary to
many fears that video games and computers will lead to greater individual
and social isolation, it may be that at least some of these technologies
have inherent social aspects that have been thus far ignored.
The
potential for new interactive media to change the nature of children's
leisure time is enormous. Already, children are faced with a dizzying
array of high-tech activities that fill their electronic childhoods,
as well as with traditional printed media. Harnessing the potential
of these old and new media to create entertaining as well as educationally
beneficial cultural products, and to do so without further commercialization
of our youth, is the challenge we all face. If history, is a guide,
great expectations of the transformatory power of new media to wonderfully
enhance children's cognitive and emotional lives probably will fall
short. On the other hand, if we do produce the very best products possible,
perhaps those goals will move closer. In much of the world, children
already live an electronic childhood. Can we make it a healthy, safe
and caring one?
