Children and Media

“Children & media”

The development of media has been extremely fast in the past century. During the day, people are generally using the media for about 58% of their time, and this, only for personal reasons. Children who have been born in the past 5 years normally use media. Children that were born earlier do not know the media from birth.

I want to know what the difference is between these kinds of children and what are the consequences. I believe children should play more with toys, and outside with other children because they need to develop themselves without media.

The first part of the blog will be about two events. The first is about the psychological problems that children can get from overuse of media and the second is about how well children are actually using social media.

Some articles examine the relationship between food and social media and in the second section the relationship between advertisement and the effects on the children’s reactions. In addition, I have three websites that I would recommend to read which are interesting for this topic. Lastly, there will be a personal opinion as a result of the information incorporated in this blog.

Current event 1

The telegraph has posted a current event about the using of social media and the mental health of children. They said that children who spend a lot of time on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Watsapp, Snap Chat, and Twitter, have twice as much the risk to get psychological problems. The emotional and social development from the children will be suffered from it because they spend too much time in a virtual world. This means that the world of children is the computer, mobile phone and the TV. The researches want to say with this that more children have a social life and establish contacts on the Internet than in real life. For example Watsapp is widely used to make easy new contacts or maintain them. Experts say that children are delayed in their social and emotional development. 8% of the children between 10 and 15 years spend about three hours a day on social media. Girls spend more time than boys on social media. The ratio is 1 of 10 girls spend much more time on social media; boys have a ratio of 1 out of 20. In addition, experts say that it is a possibility to build social contacts and relationships in a different way through social media. Chairmen of the Headmasters and, psychiatrists have an opinion on this subject and they said the following:

The new chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) of schools, King (2015) said “children at leading independent schools are turning to counselling to help them cope with the pressures of appearing popular on social media”.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist of the Priory Group, Hayley Van Zwanberg (2015) said: “Children are totally immersed in a virtual world which is damaging both to the way they see themselves and the way they perceive the real world; some young children are finding it hard to unpick reality from fantasy”.

This means that she indicated that it is for children difficult to look at themselves, and perceive the real world, since they are immersed in the world virtual. This concluded that it is difficult for a child to differentiate the illusions that are shown on the various social media from the real world (Jamieson, 2015).

Current event 2

If social media is running children, is a posted from the CNN.  Pew Research Center said that 92% of the children are everyday online on social media and 24% of children are constantly online (Lenhart, 2015). From this you can conclude that children spend much more time on social media and they check very often if there are any new messages. Since they are so much online social media gives children the feeling of anxiety and depression. “The National College Health Assessment performed in 2014 study of nearly 80,000 college students, and they found that 54% of students reported experiencing overwhelming anxiety in the past 12 months and that 32.6% felt so depressed that it was difficult to function during the same period. The study also found that 6.4% had intentionally, cut, burned, bruised or otherwise injured themselves, that 8.1% had seriously considered suicide and that 1.3% had attempted suicide” (Potarazu, 2015).

These results are obviously terrible and shocking to read. Children should view a different world. The results are alarming because the children from now growing up in a different way than 10 years ago. Previously, children needed to make themselves busy only with social relations at school, friends and with people who they did sports together with. But children from now should also have a social network now and that further at a social network place and in an accelerated pace. What parents might do is to help the children to understand the dangers and consequences. This means that children do not always know where things are placed on the Internet and which people can see them. The effects can be on short-term as well as longer, with regard to jobs, relationships or friends (Potarazu, 2015).

What the experts say 1

The researchers did at more than twelve thousand American students at school a survey, which consisted of questions like “how many hours a day do you look TV?” and “how many times a week do you eat chocolate?” The results showed that the students eat more and unhealthy as the TV is turned on for longer. They were also more likely to skip breakfast more often and go to a fast food restaurant, nor healthy eating habits.

This study appears to be the science world is not really because the image of fat kids on the sofa in front of the TV is fairly stereotyped. However, it does confirm the results from previous studies, the researchers say. According to them, this is also an intermediate step between TV watching and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, which can be caused by unhealthy eating.

But what about other factors, such as habitat, eating habits or education? Which have no bearing on the viewing and snacking behavior of a thirteen year old student? The researchers believe the results for a lot of factors to be compensated, but say they do not know exactly if watching TV and snacking can have the same (third) cause. Do they think much and unhealthy snacking has to do with the amount of chips-and cola commercials that pass on TV (Black, Hager, Candelaria, Latta, Hurley Wang & Caulfield, 2012).

What the experts say 2

This researchers Penic, Cauberghe & Pelsmacker, did researches about the advergames of advertising and the fundamentally different from traditional advertising techniques. Advergames integrate their advertising message in an entertainment-focused computer. This implies that the consumer at the same time is exposed to a commercial message and the content of the media. A consequence of this is that the boundaries between advertising, entertainment and information on Internet very close are. A second difference is the degree of interaction. Unlike the passive exposure to traditional advertising, advergames demand a certain level of activity among consumers that binds them with interactive content.

Despite this substantial and ongoing evolution in children targeted ad techniques, in comparison with the operation and processing of traditional advertising techniques, little is known about how children process the exposure to these new forms of advertising and how this process affects their consumption habits. The role of Persuasion Knowledge, or advertising literacy is especially unclear. Advertising Wisdom is the knowledge about the effects of advertising that one needs to make a critical and conscious way to deal with advertising. In children, this knowledge is still underdeveloped which makes them less able to look critically at advertising and thus more susceptible to the persuasive power of the message (Penic, Cauberghe & Pelsmacker, 2013).

For further Research

The following three websites I would recommend to look at different ways since they indicate how they look at the media and children. The first site indicates what impact media can have on children, such as dietary habits, commercials, brain development, violences or sex influence. It also gives tips and advice for parents on how they can deal with them in order to limit the example. The second site is also about the effects of media on children, but it explains in a different way. Here, it is mainly being thought given to the different media and how these influence the children in their own way. So here is how it is looked at separately from the TV, music, video games and the Internet. The last site is a TEDx talk; it contains a video with Dimitri Christakis who talks about his research on children and media.

1. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/default.aspx
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792691/
3. http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxRainier-Dimitri-Christakis

How I see it

Parents and children put information of themselves online in the form of (intimate) pictures and videos. This subject and the way how children use media is what I would like to focus on in this part of the blog.

There are today many types and sizes of social media platforms, such as online communities like Facebook or Twitter or the fast news media chat platform Skype, MSN and WhatsApp. And then, we would almost forget that there still exists YouTube for movies and music, and that there exists a platform called Instagram with photos, which people can share. And then we finally also have a broad range of online chat mediums that are included on smartphones or can be downloaded in the Play store. As you can see there are plenty of choices for everyone. And what they can offer for the kids risks their development.

Parents

Parents who put pictures on the internet from children do this because they don’t know the aware of the risks, and unfortunately there are certainly risks. What there I really like about is that people do not seem to realize that they may inflict. At the time parent’s snapshots of their children online sites, they should well realize a few things. Certainly babies exposed pictures look so cute, but can be a prey to the wrong people. Because unfortunately we live in a world where a lot of sick people live also. These are also on the net. In fact, they search the web continuously down to photos or videos of children

Children

Children nowadays are, so early on, familiarized with the World Wide Web. Because so many children have a smartphone, they are almost always online, tweeting, on Facebook and chat throughout the day. One of the drawbacks of this is that children often have no idea what may cause some messages to readers. They can write a post with the best intentions but the way of writing it could make it into a negative message causing negative reactions and encounter the word used in these messages enormously.

Other disadvantages are that people forget to think about the privacy settings, which often means unnecessary information from the children can enter online. Another disadvantage is that children may come in contact with anyone with whom they want, and unfortunately there are people who do not have such good intentions.

But with social media and the Internet, I also see that they have advantages, it’s not all negative, the problem is usually just the negative emphasis. This makes it immediately becomes a negative image and a stamp that it is bad. The great advantage of social media and the internet is that children can find everything they want to know, it is a very useful and informative medium, and children can receive this information at their own pace.

Reference

Jamieson, s. (2015, 22 October) Excessive social media use harms children’s mental health. References on 28 November van, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11943810/Excessive-social-media-use-harms-childrens-mental-health.html

Potarazu, S.(2015, 22 October). Is social media ruining our kids? References on 1 December 2015 van, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/21/opinions/potarazu-kids-social-media/

R. Hager, M. Candelaria, L. W. Latta, K. M. Hurley, Y. Wang, L. E. Caulfield, M. M. Black. Maternal Perceptions of Toddler Body Size: Accuracy and Satisfaction Differ by Toddler Weight Status. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2012; 166 (5): 417 DOI: 10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.1900

M. Perrin. Respecting Cultural Values of Toddler Weight Perception While Discouraging Parental Overfeeding: Comment on “Maternal Perceptions of Toddler Body Size”. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2012; 166 (5): 422 DOI: 10.1001/archpediatrics.2012.278

Panic, V. Cauberghe, P. De Pelsmacker (2013), Comparing TV ads and advergames targeting children: the impact of persuasion knowledge on behavioral responses. Journal of Advertising, vol.: 42, issue: 2-3, 264-273