Center on Media and Child Health

"Active-Adventure" Video Game in Development

The following was written by Garth DeAngelis, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center.  To learn more about this project, see the team's blog. 

In the past 20 years, the percentage of overweight adolescents in the United States has more than doubled --  nearly 30% of American children today are considered obese or overweight. There are numerous reasons for this disturbing fact, but our team is striving to address one of them: the sedentary nature of video games.

There is an unfortunate correlation between the increase in child obesity and the popularity of video games. In 1999, the average child played video games for 29 minutes a day. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), that number has more than doubled to approximately 63 minutes per day in 2007.  What can be done about this?

Since the 1980s, products have been released that merged movement and gaming such as Nintendo’s Power Pad (see original commercial) and Dance Dance Revolution (see DDR champs in action).   However, there has never been an “exergame” that combined traditional elements of gaming with active “exercise-based” inputs to create an immersive story with free exploratory navigability in an open world in the vein of a Zelda or Dungeons & Dragons epic.

The success of the Nintendo Wii (see demo) led us to believe that a game could be created that would combine exercise and fantasy worlds.  After meeting with medical experts at University of Pittsburgh’s Medical Campus, they recommended designing a way to increase a child’s heart rate when playing. We immediately thought of the success of the DDR dance pad. After extensive research, we couldn’t find any other game that re-designed the dance pad to be used for a non-dancing/simulation game.

We knew we could literally place the child in a video game hero’s shoes by re-purposing the foot pad. To make our hero jump over a chasm while being chased by a menacing enemy, the player will jump in their living room; when our hero unleashes a three-step melee combo on an antagonist, the player will not only swing their arms, but move their feet in conjunction to mimic the attack of their avatar. The child will be actively engaged in a traditional action-adventure experience, but their mind will be focused in the ‘flow’ of gameplay, not on burning calories. We believe this can be done precisely with our project, The Winds of Orbis: An Active-Adventure.

Our goal is not to supplant traditional exercise or sports activities. Rather, we hope to replace the sedentary 30 to 60 minutes a day that the average child spends sitting on the couch moving only their thumbs with an experience that will encourage them to stand up, move, and sweat while playing the type of game they already love with a smile on their face.

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.

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?

Handling Celeb Gossip with Kids

The following was written by Guest Blogger Dr. Gwenn, a pediatrician, health journalist, mother, and author of the blog Dr. Gwenn Is In.

Teen celebrity news is always adding that extra twist to our lives as parents, forcing us to answer our kids’ tough questions.  And the latest gossip about Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy is no exception. 

What is important is our reaction to their questions and our ability to answer them in a way that keeps them coming back with more questions. If we become too rigid or judgmental, they'll run and get their answers from someone else.

The other element of this picture is to help our kids see the difference between our world, the real world, and the "real" world of the celebrities they idolize. I try to get my girls to see that their idols are in a way always in a show and always "on". Their lives are very similar to the sit-coms they are hired for and really the best "reality TV" on air today!

Celebrity news like this always sparks some great articles on how to talk to kids about difficult topics. One of my favorites is from last December's Newsweek. Author Kathleen Deveny hits the nail on the head about celebrity news and kids in her last paragraph:

"So I vow not to bring the subject up with my daughter and if she brings it up with me I will try to find out what she thinks about it. I will try not to be harsh or judgmental about Ms. Spears, because I want my daughter to feel like she can talk to me about anything."

So, as 2008 gets more underway, put on your best "I'm hear if you want to talk" ears...and get ready for another year of celebrity news. Who knows what we are in for next!

Guest Blogger: Media Literacy in K-12 Schools

The following was written by Guest Blogger Frank Baker, a Media Education Consultant:

A few weeks back, while speaking to an elementary school about the influence of toy advertising, a fifth-grader raised her hand and asked: "Mr. Baker, what does deceptive mean?"  I had used that adjective to describe specific techniques used by the people who create commercial messages. I went on to define it for her and urged her teachers to add that word to their ever-growing vocabulary list.

The techniques of persuasion in advertising are just one element in teaching media literacy to our young people. In 1999, in a partnership with Rutgers University media professor Robert Kubey, we scoured all 50 state's teaching standards, finding elements of media literacy in three major curriculum areas: English/Language Arts, Social Studies/History, and Health.

The good news is that elements of media literacy are in most states' standards. The bad news is that media literacy is not being taught. Most teachers have not received any formal training in how to integrate critical thinking and viewing about media messages. Most school libraries have little in the way of texts for teachers or students.

The media are attractive to young people; they watch, listen to, and even wear media. Yet, the American education system is, for the most part, blind to the fact that media are languages which need to be taught and understood too.  For those who want to know more, I hope you will log onto the Media Literacy Clearinghouse website.

• Visit the website Media Literacy Clearinghouse
• Contact Frank
• Contact CMCH about being a Guest Blogger

CMCH Initiative: Guest Bloggers

This post was written by CMCH Director Dr. Michael Rich:

One of the founding philosophies of CMCH was to provide a “village square” where researchers investigating any aspect of media influence on child health and development could exchange ideas, questions, concerns, and resources. Our field has long been hobbled by scant funding, limited communication among researchers (especially those in different academic disciplines), and missed opportunities, in terms of unnecessarily duplicated studies, incomplete or ineffective studies that could have been better accomplished in another field, and powerfully synergistic collaborations that never occurred.

To facilitate dialogue, networking, and potential collaborations, CMCH would like to invite you, our subscribers, to become “guest bloggers.” The idea would be to share the work that you and your institutions are doing, to explore the areas in which you need or seek help, and to open discussions of key questions this field is facing.

In this spirit, I’d like to share descriptions of my 3 current projects in hopes that those who are working in these areas will feel welcome to join us in collegial dialogue and possibly collaboration:

• Developing and implementing a new, more comprehensive and sensitive data collection method for assessing media exposure in a complex, multitasking environment
• Conducting a follow-up to my 2001 study of what pediatricians in training are taught regarding media effects
• Applying Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) (the method where kids are given camcorders to make video diaries of their illness experiences) to better understand overweight in childhood and adolescence.

Please feel free to reach out to us if you wish to discuss any of these projects or to contribute a similar description of your own research directions as a guest blogger. No experience with blogging is required, you just compose the text. 

By seeking collaboration of our strengths, we will be more powerful and effective as a community of researchers. Come join us the in the “global village square.”