Center on Media and Child Health

Baby Einstein No Longer Advertised as Educational

Last Summer we reported on a study of baby videos that showed children who regularly watched these programs scored about 10% lower on language skills than those who did not watch them. 

After this study was released, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) asked Disney, the parent company of Baby Einstein, to "release research showing that Baby Einstein videos are beneficial to babies or publicly acknowledge that no such research exists."

The CCFC has announced that this plea has resulted in a complete redesign of the Baby Einstein website, which no longer promotes their DVDs as educational.  Though the implication of the name Einstein remains the same, it's a step in the right direction. 

Do Parents Understand Their Children's Online Activities?

The following was written by guest blogger Dafna Lemish, editor of the Journal of Children and Media, professor of communication at Tel Aviv University, and future CMCH visiting scholar.  Since this study is currently published in Hebrew, she translates her findings here:

My colleague Rivka Ribak and I sought to understand the role of the Internet within an Israeli inter-generational context, focusing on parental mediation and children's literacy. We used elaborate questionnaires (developed following the UK Children Go-On-Line project) which were completed by 532 dyads of children and their parents. 

The study details intergenerational responses to "out-going content" – information that children give away (such as their personal information and their photos); and "in-coming content" – exposure to material that is deemed inappropriate to the age of the surfers (such as pornography, racist and gory content); the children's perceptions of on-line dangers; and the parent-child-Internet triangle – what parents know and do not know about their children's web practices.

We found that parents know little about their children's Internet proficiency; however, parents in Israel do not suffer from a "moral panic" over their children’s use of the Internet. Instead, they trust themselves and their children. Thus it is educational programs and media literacy that they regard as helpful, and not censorship – that quintessential cure for moral panic.

Most interesting for us is noting the difficulties in interpreting the findings:

• in practical terms -- e.g., is the internet a legitimate source for homework?
• from a moral standpoint -- e.g., is experimentation with alternative identities immoral?
• from a developmental point of view -- e.g., are children's efforts at concealing their on-line activities from their parents helpful for the development of their individual identities?
• from historical perspective -- e.g., do parents today really know and regulate their children less than parents in olden times?

We learned a lot from this study about how the same data can be interpreted in quite different ways, and used to support quite different ideological positions about the social construction of childhood, and what are good and/or bad media practices.

Speak up! Commenting Improved

The "comment" feature of this blog was previously open only to those with a TypePad account.  This has been changed so that ANYONE can join the conversation as long as they have a valid email address. 

We hope this encourages readers to respond to topics that intrigue or challenge them.  Under any post you'd like to comment on, just click the "comments" link to get to a page where you can compose and submit your statement. 

Music Lyrics: How Much Substance Use?

The following was written by guest blogger Dr. Brian Primack, University of Pittsburgh researcher and author of the new study Content Analysis of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Other Drugs in Popular Music.

Let me start out by emphasizing what this article was not: it does not show the effect of music lyrics on young people.  It was just a content analysis.  Still, this is an important starting point.  The next step will be to conduct more careful research that actually tries to determine what effects – if any – musical lyrics have on substance use behavior.

Our main findings were that about one third of popular songs have some reference to substance use.  Because music is so popular, this translates into substantial exposure – we estimate that the average young person will be exposed to 84 music references to substance use a day, or 30,000 references a year.

Although as I mentioned this study does not equate that exposure with behavior, this large exposure is worth considering.  It may have implications for substance use education, for instance.  If young people are hearing 84 references a day to substance use, most of which glamorize it, what kind of effect can we hope to have from a few hours each year of “anti-drug” education?  A more practical and empowering approach may be to teach young people to analyze and evaluate the messages they hear in media regarding substance use.  This approach – sometimes called “media literacy” – may help young people doubt the veracity of these messages, which after all are there to sell music and not to “tell it as it is.”

Another important finding from our study was that there are very different patterns in different musical genres regarding both (1) what kind of substance use is portrayed; and (2) what that substance use is associated with. Rap music portrayed a lot of marijuana.  Country music portrayed alcohol, but not marijuana.  Rock music often showed negative effects of substance use (like addiction).  Country music often portrayed substance use with humor. 

These kinds of findings lead to more questions.  Does the context matter?  Is a reference to substance use more likely to cause a change in behavior if it is associated with particular consequences?  We would probably imagine that young people would be more likely to model substance use behaviors if they look fun or rewarding.  But, that being said, other research has shown that the context might not matter so much – in particular, Dalton, Sargent, et al. showed that smoking in movies is associated with adolescent smoking *regardless* of the context!  What will be the answer with music?

Speaking of smoking in movies, some feel that music is probably not as compelling, since it is auditory and not visual.  On the other hand, music exposure is much larger than overall movie exposure, and music is famous for being linked to adolescent identity.  When Kurt Cobain committed suicide, there was a rash of copy-cat suicides.  If young people were willing to follow him to the grave, might some also have been influenced by the substance use he portrayed in his music?