Children

Children and
and television
television
BY
Prasanna.Hulikavi
Prasanna.Hulikavi
“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes,
and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to
the extent that we humans are determined to use
it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and
lights in a box. There is a great, perhaps decisive
battle to be fought, against ignorance, intolerance
and indifference. This weapon of television can
be useful.”

Edward R. Murrow, Television Reporter

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 The Age of Television
• TV’s are larger, have more realistic color and images
than ever before
• 248 million TV sets in households
• Extreme Cable - access to dozens, even hundreds, of
channels and video movies –more than 500
broadcasting channels
• Violence and childhood obesity are some of the
concerns

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What's On

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Media teaches
children

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• DD has the largest penetration.
• Channels are luring child audience.
• Our target audience the child is more
tech savvy
• Commercial broadcasters and
advertisers are telecasting to our
young India.

Prasanna.Hulikavi
• Media platforms are merging one can now
use the phone, look at an image clip , listen
to music ,surf the net, click pictures, and
edit all these eg a cell phone.
• The world is shrinking in the binary code
of 01……….Digital is the buzz word

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 The influence of media
on children
• Dramatically influences children at all ages.

• Children are physically passive, yet mentally alert when

watching TV.

• Repetition – violence becomes so familiar that it

becomes normal

• Reduced boundaries between adult and child knowledge.

• Both quantity and quality matter.

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 Heavy viewers of TV
Kids watching 4 or more hours
per day…
• Put in less effort on school work
• Have poorer reading skills
• Play less well with friends
• Have fewer hobbies and activities
• More likely to be overweight

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 Television & Child
Development
• Vulnerability in the younger years
• Importance of early nutrition and eating habits
• In early years children are sensitive to
stimulation and modeling, and cannot filter out
the negative
• Infants and toddlers need response and
reinforced stimulation – two things TV cannot
provide

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 Birth to 18 months

• Lights, color, and sound of the

television are appealing.
• Can recognize characters but cannot
understand content.
• Parent-child interaction during this
time is crucial.

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 18 months to 3 years

• By 3, most have a “favorite” program

• Children can begin extracting
meaning from what they watch
• Likely to imitate behaviors seen on
TV
• Learn new words and language skills

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 Three to Six Year Olds

• Play is essential – experience is the teacher

• Exploration facilitates understanding how the
world works
• Television does not offer opportunities for
active play and interactive exploration
• Can recognize “good” and “bad” characters
• Most likely to act aggressively after watching
aggressive characters

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 Six to Eight
• TV time drops because of school
attendance and activities
• Usually want to watch non-
educational television
• Effects of media violence are
especially critical in this time

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 Nine to Twelve
• Believe that what they see is a
reflection of “real” life
• Develop television heroes/role models
• Self-esteem & identity are influenced
greatly
• Critical age for television influence on
body image

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 Effects on Body Image
& Gender Identity
• Boys
– Violence is acceptable
– Body dissatisfaction
– Treatment of women
• Girls
– Ideal Weight & Image
– Gender Roles – stereotypes
– Effects on self-esteem

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Content is the KING packaging is
the EMPEROR

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• television viewed by children is of programs not
specifically considered "children's shows,“
• the production of children's programming is big
business, often defined by the ways in which
"children's shows" are distinctive.
• "Children's shows" are those which garner a
majority of a child audience, traditionally the
Saturday morning programs.
• .

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• These shows are almost always profitable.

• As the child audience changes rapidly

• children do not seem to mind watching reruns, the

programs are shown as many as four times a year

• factor that reduces production costs without

reduction in program availability or profitability.
• Moreover, a strong syndication market for off-
network children's shows, adds to the profits

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 Assumptions
• Both those who purchase and those who
produce children's programs operate with
assumptions about the child audience that,
although changing, remain important.
• They assume, for example, that there are
gender differences in preferences, but an
important corollary is the assumption that
while girls will watch "boys' shows," boys
will not watch "girls' shows."

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• They assume that older children control the set,
an assumption related to the axiom
• that younger children will watch "up" (in age
appeal)
• but that older children will not watch "down."
• The producers and purchasers assume that
children have a short attention span, that
repetition is a key to education and
entertainment, and that children prefer
recognizable characters and stories

Prasanna.Hulikavi
• children's attraction to the screen is
that children's viewing is governed
by the novelty of the visual stimulus,
rapid formal features such as
movements, visual complexity, cuts,
pans, zooms, which produce an
orienting reflex.

Prasanna.Hulikavi
• computers, video games, print media,
videotapes, music, and television. Although
television is the most commonly used medium,
viewing time varies with age.
• two to seven years of age, children's viewing
time is about two hours per day
• Increasing through childhood, it peaks at about
three and a half hours per day during middle
school before dropping off to about two and a
half hours per day during adolescence.

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 The family environments of those who view
more television tend to share certain
characteristics

• parents who watch a lot of television,

• television left on as background
noise,
• television in the child's room.
•

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 How Do They Watch?

• Children often have been characterized as

"zombie" viewers who stare mindlessly at
television for hours. Instead, naturalistic and
laboratory studies of how children watch
television indicate that children typically divide
television viewing among a variety of activities.

Prasanna.Hulikavi
• At all ages, children primarily monitor
television content with short looks and
only occasionally engage in extended
looks at the television. Just as total
viewing time changes across age, the
percentage of time children spend
actually looking at the television
increases through middle school then
drops slightly during adolescence

Prasanna.Hulikavi
• Another common misconception is that the changing sights and sounds of
television passively "capture" young children's attention. Certain formal,
noncontent features of television production do sometimes cause children
to orient automatically (e.g., a sudden loud noise, a rapid movement).
Nevertheless, many features that attract or hold children's attention are
informative, signaling content that children are likely to find relevant or
entertaining. For example, the presence of children's voices, peculiar
voices, sound effects, animation, and puppets cue children to the child-
relevance of the content. Children's ongoing comprehension also influences
their attention. If children are making sense of a program and judging it
to be "for them," they are more likely to keep attending to it than if it
seems confusing or adult-oriented.
•
Read more:
Television - How Do Children Use Television?, How Are Children Affected by
Television?
http://social.jrank.org/pages/647/Television.html#ixzz0dyXKfa8M

Prasanna.Hulikavi
• sticky" programming--programming
engineered in such a way that
children were able to remember and
understand what they saw on the
screen

Prasanna.Hulikavi
 The influence of media
on children
• Dramatically influences children at all ages.

• Children are physically passive, yet mentally alert when

watching TV.

• Repetition – violence becomes so familiar that it

becomes normal

• Reduced boundaries between adult and child knowledge.

• Both quantity and quality matter.

Prasanna.Hulikavi
Prasanna.Hulikavi
Prasanna.Hulikavi