Center on Media and Child Health

Can a Doctor Visit Help Prevent Violence?

A stray bullet from a teenager's gun, which hit a 7-year-old Boston-area boy yesterday afternoon, is a painful reminder of the violence that has become a daily concern in communities around the country. The problem is particularly salient when it involves young people, which it often does: Homicide is the second-leading cause of death among young people in the U.S.

Why is violence so widespread? It may be related to whether we view it as a normal part of life. Research suggests that young people are likely to believe that violence is a normal way to resolve conflicts, achieve goals, and acquire status.  They are especially likely to believe violence is normal if they are exposed to violent media, disciplined using corporal punishment, or able to access guns.

Based on this evidence, a group of researchers tested whether media use, corporal punishment, and gun access would decrease when families received violence-prevention counseling during well-child exams. This study by Barkin et al, published in today's Pediatrics, found that families who received the counseling were more likely to reduce their children's media use (and, thus, exposure to violent media) and to lock up their guns (if they had them) than were those who did not receive the counseling. They were not, however, more likely to use timeouts instead of spankings to discipline their children.

TV Use Down; Computer Use Up

The 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey is now available.  Here are the results of the media-related questions:

• 35% of students watched television 3 or more hours per day on an average school day (see table).  This is down from 43% in 1999.
• 25% of students used a computer for something that was not school work for 3 or more hours per day on an average school day (see table).  This is up slightly from 22% in 2003.

Though overall use between the two is down, I wonder if teens are really watching less television, or whether the availability of TV episodes over the Internet combined with widely available broadband access means they are watching those shows over the Internet instead of on a traditional TV set.

Sleep Quality Declines: Is Media a Culprit?

If you're reading this post in the morning, you may be yawning as you try to down some coffee and wake yourself up from the precious few hours of sleep you got last night.  So, you won't be surprised to learn that sleep quality and quantity is declining for adults; but did you know it is also declining for children?  A recent study showed that kids in 2005 slept at least 2 hours less each night than kids in 1981. 

There are many plausible and interesting ideas for how media use may be related to this decline, including:

• Since electronics are cheaper to purchase, many kids have media in their bedrooms, providing opportunities for displacing sleep with media
• DVDs and DVRs make media available on-demand when people have free time, usually late at night
• Media has become more exciting, more violent, and more sexualized, making it harder to fall asleep after watching

Though research on how media may affect sleep is scant, a new research brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation highlights what is known about media and sleep in different developmental stages, different forms of media, and different modes of viewing. 

>> See research on media and sleep from the CMCH Database of Research

Do Crime Rates Influence Sedentary Behavior?

In the last 30 years, technological changes have made staying inside more appealing to kids than ever before.  With TV, video games, computers and other media inside, kids aren't always interested in playing outside, or encouraged to do so.  One reason parents may actually want to keep their kids inside is because neighborhoods are less safe for kids to play in.

A new study by Brown et al investigates whether an area's crime rate influences the sedentary behavior of the children who live there. After studying a population of 4th graders in Texas, they found that:

• Boys were more likely to play video games in communities where robbery rates are high and sexual offenders are common
• Girls were more likely to watch TV in communities where sexual offenders are common, but they were less likely to use computers

The authors point out that given the link they found between crime rates and some kinds of media, and that using these media is sedentary in nature, then crime rates may be indirectly influencing obesity.

Infant TV Associated with Limited Verbal Interactions

In a new study by Mendelsohn et al , researchers studied the TV behavior of 154 low-income mothers and their 6-month-old infants.  97% of the mothers reported that their infants watched TV every day.  The researchers observed that the parents interacted with their children just 23% of the time that the TV was on.

As CMCH mentions in our guide to media and developmental stages, infants and toddlers need stimulation in three main ways, none of which are provided by television-watching: interacting with people, interacting with their physical environment, and solving open-ended problems. 

What I Learned at the CCFC Summit

On Friday, I presented at the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood's Annual Summit.  My talk about research on media and sex was well-attended and lead to some great discussion among participants. 

I wanted to post about a few resources I became aware of through the Summit and pass them on to CMCH blog readers, since you may also be interested:

• Sarah Grimes, a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University, presented her work on interactive websites and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) for kids.  Turns out she has a blog about digital games and other technologies for children: Gamine Expedition
• In the main gathering area, there was an exhibit titled "Buy Me Something" by the talented photographer Nat Ward, who aims for these images to "challenge people to consider how toys and the mechanisms that facilitate their sale inform and reproduce a distinct set of culturally-defined values."  Click the arrow on the bottom right to see more images:  Buy Me Something
• The Media Education Foundation has a new video coming out in Fall 2008 about the commercialization of childhood.  CMCH Director Dr. Michael Rich makes an appearance around minute 3:37 in the trailer they previewed at the Summit: Consuming Kids

 

Let's Talk About Sex(ual content)

CMCH Librarian Brandy King will be presenting at the 6th Annual Summit of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.  The Summit will take place April 3rd-5th at Wheelock College, and will focus on the theme "Consuming Kids: The Sexualization of Children and Other Commercial Calamities." 

Ms. King will present research about sex and media followed by a live website tour of CMCH resources designed to help researchers pursue study on this topic.

See CMCH resources on sex and media

High-Tech Tots: Call for Book Chapters

Calling all media researchers!  The newest volume in the Research in Global Child Advocacy Series will be titled High-Tech Tots: Childhood in a Digital World. Editors Ilene R. Berson and Michael J. Berson have issued a Call for Chapters (click to download HighTechTots.pdf).  Proposals are due by May 15th. 

This volume will examine the interface between young children and information and communication technology (ICT) from a global perspective. There are three primary areas of emphasis:

• ICT as a teaching and learning tool across cultures and countries to promote the social and cognitive development of young children;
• Research on developmentally appropriate education on cybersafety and cybercitizenship; and
• Studies on the influence of digital technologies on young children, including exposure to inappropriate content and participation in online social networks.

Best Advice? Ban Bedroom TVs

An article in the NY Times suggests that children should not have TV sets in their bedrooms.  The author points out studies that have connected children having bedroom TVs with negative effects on sleep, overweight, smoking uptake, and school functioning.  The CMCH Database of Research contains 24 studies that have examined some aspect of having televisions in kids' bedrooms.

The article suggests that these effects are because parents simply are not sure what kinds of shows or how long their kids are watching on these private televisions.

The article also mentions new research by Epstein et al where researchers put monitors on household televisions, which resulted in a reduction of hours kids spent in front of the TV and a decrease in Body Mass Index.

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.