This
project is the result of a partnership formed between Media Analysis Laboratory
at
The
goals of this project can be simply stated:
we want to see if we can help make our children’s lives safer and healthier by reducing the risks associated with TV watching, Internet use and playing with video games.
But before we provide you more details about this media risk reduction strategy -- and ask for your support -- we want to provide you with some background information based on our review of scientific research on the risks associated with our mass entertainment media – especially TV, movies and video games. More information in the form of dossiers and bibliographies will be provided throughout this website.
Perhaps you’ve noticed: we live in a risky world. Every day we are told about some new danger, a new disease, and new environmental hazard. The fact is that living in our high tech society means that we have increased the environmental risks we face. Many of these risks are not a matter of personal choice. Take air pollution for example. Our kids will encounter this risk if we live in a polluted city, whether we drive or not. Risks are calculated as the probability of a negative outcome from a specific activity measured across wide populations and over considerable time. The more we know about risks, the better we think we can control or avoid them. We rely on medical science to assess these risks and the media to keep us informed. We are in fact overwhelmed by statistics that indicate that just about every thing we do has an element of risk to it.
Of course there are many other things our children do in the course of there lives which knowingly involve risks to their health and well being – from skiing at Whistler, smoking, or eating at McDonald’s. The growth of risk science was predicated on the belief that the better we can predict a health hazard occurrence, the more we can avoid their devastating consequences. This is particularly true of lifestyle risks, because the dangers arise not from eating one hamburger, or smoking a single cigarette, but from a cumulative patterning of voluntary behavior over time. The tragic backcountry avalanche that recent killed seven students has brought home the importance of the science of risk assessment for our everyday decisions about our children.
The reason for acknowledging, rather than avoiding risks is that we sometimes discover simple ways of reducing them by changing the way we think about them. For example on average 1700 children die each year in car accidents. This makes cars one of the greatest mortality risks to children. Yet this number has been halved since the 1970’s because we use seat belts and car seats that helped reduce the risks associated with cars. We benefit most from the scientific study of risks when they provide us with a sensible way of reducing, avoiding or limiting the risks to our kids.
Thinking about lifestyle risks is now an important part of contemporary parenting. As long as they are a matter of informed consent we accept a certain degree of risk in our children’s lives. Certainly, if we thought about all the risks we would drown in the waves of anxiety or become exhausted by searching for accurate information about them. So we normally tolerate levels of anxiety about our kids as part of the normal course of life (walking to school) and even acknowledge that our children seek others (back country skiing; skate boarding etc.) because they also have other benefits. We could of course opt for zero tolerance. But because lifestyle risks are voluntary, governments are increasingly reluctant to regulate them. More and more responsibility for managing risk therefore falls upon the parental consumer. So parents wrestle with difficult decisions daily: should I get a helmet for my young skiier; should we allow our 10 year old to take the bus home after dark? Yet we often find that we make these choices with very imperfect knowledge of the real risks. But if we have trouble making wise choices, then how much harder is it for our kids. This is why when risks are hard to estimate we advise the precautionary principle: to err on the side of safety in uncertainty.
In fact, parents have been concerned about the risks associated with new media since TV first diffused into our living rooms after WWII. Originally announced as a window onto the world of knowledge, the media also revealed itself to be a vast wasteland of low brow entertainment. So there have been a series of inquiries dating back to 1951 assessing the benefits and risks associated with media. It will come as no surprise to you, that there are significant health and safety risks associated with excessive media consumption. Recently we learned that even sitting in front of a computer screen all day, created a risk of heart attack. So too, the flickering screen of the Pokemon cartoon, was found to induce epileptic seizures in 13 Japanese children before it was changed. Both these risks are relatively rare. But as we are learning with the internet, and video games, every media has both costs and benefits: even though the internet allows children to do their homework on-line, it also allows them to surf for pornography, be cyber-stalked or to be subjected to email bullying. And the more kids use them the greater the risks can be.
The dossiers we prepared are to help parents learn more
about children’s relationship to TV, video games or the internet which
underwrites heavy media consumption. But these reviews document three fairly
well known lifestyle risks associated with a pattern of heavy media
consumption: poor grades; lack of fitness; and anti-social behaviour.
Risks
to Education
It
is long been said that watching too much TV turns our children’s brains to
mush. Well this is not exactly true, But
the literature shows a clear correlation between excessive use of media, poor
reading and lower grades (Van der voort;
viewers of TV. Grade C students are over represented in the
heavy viewing group.
It has also been said that TV makes kids passive
couch potatoes. Although such rhetoric is unhelpful, because it blames TV for
what is a lifestyle risk, there is an element of truth to this assertion. A
number of recent studies note that obesity is much higher among heavy TV
watchers, especially for girls. http dossier Again the YSRB study shows that there is a
general relationship between excessive media consumption and the health
risks associated with obesity and inactivity. Such correlations we be expected
for two reasons: first because children who watch a lot of TV will be exposed
to more snack and fast food commercials. And second because in order to watch a
lot of TV these children tend to give up other kinds of active leisure
activities like sports and walking.
Aggressive
and Anti-Social Behavior
With crime rates rising from
the 1950’s, youth violence and crime have become a leading health issue in
First the good news; Murder rates have after 30 years of
climbing, peaked in 1992-93 and have begun to go down in the USA – especially
for young victims. The Surgeon General report concludes that, “three important indicators of the
violent behavior – arrest records, victimization data, and hospital emergency
room records – have shown significant downward trends. The total number of
school killings peaked in 1992 at 55 and have been
declining since.[1]
Although these brutal acts command the headlines, such killings account for
less than 1% of all murders of children in the
And now the bad news; The
media’s emphasis on murder and violence provides a distorted sense of the real
safety risks that kids experience. Youth violence and bullying has not
diminished. Recent studies in the
Although the mortality rate is much lower in
But are they safer
in these virtual playgrounds? Over the last three decades researchers have
accumulated lots of evidence that children learn about conflict from their
media – and the more they watch and play, the more their view of conflict
reflects the mean world of terrorism and revenge that permeates that world. For
example, from the YRBS in 2001, teens who watched more than 4 hours of TV per day, are 7% more likely to report getting in a fight, than
those that watch 1 hour or less per day. That doesn’t mean that watching
fictional battles causes kids to feel more hostile. But it may mean that those
kids see fighting as a legitimate way of solving social problems or have never
learned that there are alternative ways to respond to conflict. Over the
population those attitudes become magnified. We might estimate that 1,700,000
fights every year can in part be attributed to television in the
In its review of the problem of youth violence, the
Surgeon General of the
Research to
date justifies sustained efforts to curb the adverse effects of media violence
on youths. Although our knowledge is incomplete, it is sufficient to develop a
coherent public health approach to violence prevention that builds upon what is
known, even as more research is under way. Unlike earlier Federal research
reports on media violence and youth (National Institute of Mental Health, 1982;
U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social
Behavior, 1972), this discussion takes place within a broader examination of
the causes and prevention of youth violence. This context is vital. It permits
media violence to be regarded as one of many complex influences on the behavior
of
There has been 50 years of debate among media researchers about the relationship between regular consumption of violent entertainment and aggression among children and youth. The media industries predictably claim that solid evidence concerning the causal hypothesis is lacking and that kids know the difference between fiction and reality. Both of these points are valid: no-one expects ordinary kids to play Soldier of Fortune and then go out and shoot their best friends. Sure they know it's only a game. But with the recent murder of a Counterstrike player in Coquitlam, the industry also seems to be missing the point about how media are an important aspect of the socialization of aggression in the modern world. With children being exposed to 8000 deaths and 100,000 violent conflicts by the time they are 12 how could media not affect their attitudes about social conflict and their understanding of moral constructs.
Although the scientific debate about whether media cause aggressive behaviour continues there is little a growing consensus that heavy consumption of violent entertainment is one of the risk factors contributing in the development of anti-social behaviour. “tapping into a rich but often fragmented knowledge base about risk factors, preventive interventions and public education, the public health perspective calls for examinging and reconciling what are frequently contradictory conclusions.” A recent study published in Science (Johnson et al. (2002) also noted that whereas 45% of the boys who watched television more than 3 hours per day at age 14, subsequently committed aggressive acts involving others, only 8.9%, who watched television less than an hour a day were aggressive later in life [i] and that this relationship existed even after other factors that contribute to aggression such as neighbourhood, family dysfunction and developmental issues are accounted for.
Most Canadians belief that these risks
are sufficient that media violence should be regulated. The Media Q
study reported that 57% of parents see their kids as being effected by the
movies or TV they watch. In
The alternative to this political stalemate lies in thinking globally and acting locally argued Dr. Tom Robinson and colleagues in San Jose who researched the risks associated with media violence differently by applying the public health perspective suggested by the Surgeon General of the USA: if heavy media consumption increases risk to children’s health and safety, then getting them to cut back on media should reduce the risks. They therefore developed an 18 session media education program conducted in grades three and four classroom which encouraged children to limit the time they spent watching TV and playing video games. By doing so, they were able to reduce the incidence of aggression on the playground by 25%, slow the rising tide of obesity, and make kids ages 8and 9 feel safer and happier at school. Our mission is to pilot test this same risk reduction strategy in Canadian schools. The following program outlines how we hope to challenge both children and families to make better choices about what they do with their free time.
In the absence of legislation we feel that the Robinson study provides one glimmer of hope. And perhaps it is time to think globally and act locally: Given that media are being increasingly deregulated, a community based program provides the only way we can attempt to reduce the risks associated with media: We are going to launch a well designed social communication campaign that attempts to persuade kids in grade three/ four to cut down their use of media for at least one week.
Inspired by Dr. Tom Robinson
demonstration project recently undertaken we propose a community based strategy
which combines the tools of risk communication, social marketing and media
education to reduce the developmental risks associated with heavy consumption
of media. There is a method to our madness, and a
clear goal behind this strategy: namely the desire to demonstrate that
communities like ours can do something to reduce lifestyle risks associated
with the media saturated world our kids are growing up in. We will ask children
to think about the role that media play in their lives and challenge them to
explore what they can do if they didn’t rely on media so much to entertain
them: it won’t be easy.
To
achieve this goal we have adopted a social marketing approach to community
mobilization which recognizes children’s media use is deeply embedded in the
routines of family life: to change these patterns first ask why
do kids watch so much TV and play video game?: From our study of the media
saturated lifestyle studies we conclude:
Firstly because there is
pleasure in watching stories and playing games – to ask children to change
their use of media can therefore be seen as prohibiting something that is
theirs and fun. The task must be to challenge them to change without giving up
something of value.
From our surveys we know that
kids often report that watching TV and playing video games is not their most
preferred activity. In fact many of them even report they would rather being
hanging with friends or even playing with their parents. They often choose to
watch because of circumstances in their lives make it the best way they can
balance boredom, sociality and family expectations.
Children also consume media
because they share experiences and get peer support for doing so. Discussions
of programs and games is an important aspect of children’s peer interactions,
which like adults tend to consolidate in taste cultures (interpretive communities). We are
going to attempt to shift the emphasis in these peer cultures and make what you
do when you don’t watch TV cool.
We know that there are many
circumstances in family life that make media the easy solution to boredom and
loneliness. Children develop their habits within a family dynamic in which parents model
and negotiate limits to media consumption as part of the family solution for a
busy life. For example the conflict over what to watch is resolved by giving
kids a TV of their own, often in their bedroom. Not only do many parents not
know what their kids are doing with media, but few families regard TV or video
games as a way of talking about moral and aesthetic attitudes with children.
The majority of parents in our communities take a
laissez faire attitude to their children’s media use, and never bother to
communicate why playing or watching too much is not acceptable.
This media risk reduction
strategy uses a two-pronged social marketing campaign to convince grade three
students to participate in an
experiment. The experiment addresses the question what would you do if you
turned off TV, video games and PC’s for a whole week. The object of this
exercise is to explore what else there is to do instead.
The first prong is the Media Education Component: we will go into their classrooms and
talk to the children about what and how they use media.
2) what is it that we can do to motivate children to watch less TV?
REFLEXIVITY: you can’t change
what you can’t see: Media audit
discussions should focus on
the patterns we get into and how we can change them. When do you
watch and why? What do you like to watch. Why do you
make the choices that you make?
Assignment: diary of media use including music, telephone, TV, Video
games…
MEDIA EDUCATION: the first
aspect of media education therefore is to explain why we think it is a good
thing to reduce their heavy media consumption and to help them change the kinds
of programmes they watch or play.
Part of this means
communicating the risks associated with heavy media consumption the ‘bully
scripts’ – – what do children learn from watching violence? (perhaps
using the Simpsons) here we look at the question of bullying through a story,
and stop and discuss it at various points. Focus on the roles of aggressor,
victim, bystanders and what motivates each.
Part also means discussing how
media change their peer culture and attitudes, -- this is about exposing values
behind violence and aggression in media – perhaps again by preparing a few TV
examples or scripted situations or
dramas .. discuss when is aggression justified …what
are the key moral notions (Fairness, justice, rights that are assumed in our
society – this is a values education exercise) Also what's wrong with bullying
and what are the alternatives.
Heroes play an important role
in children’s lives – people they look up to and identify with. This means
discussing what makes a hero, and what makes that persons life heroic –
identifying with people who endure difficult circumstances, including finding
alternatives, or helping others
EMPOWERMENT . Changing what and how long children view is also about helping them make
tradeoffs in their lives: how they can
be doing stuff that they would rather be doing than watching TV (alone?) – ie hanging with friends, etc.. Perhaps here we need to focus
on the evidence and examples from the audit that show what kids would rather be
doing. (this involves some kind of planning and
organizing making choices – in our lives kind of exercise. Making commitments
mean re-organizing your time.
TURN OFF TV week> since
media are a legitimate part of life, we must be careful not to condemn them
completely but to help
children to cope we must also help them
make and understand healthy choices in
their leisure: Perhaps what we need is a
Turn off TV week in which we challenge students to try it out as an
experiment and see what happens. Can they get through a whole week, perhaps keep a diary on what they do when they don’t
watch TV.
To support this five session media education intervention, which will challenge kids to turn off their screens we believe that the risk reduction strategy will only be effective with the active support of parents.
To this end informed consent is the key to community involvement This will demand a fair bit of communicating about the risks associated with heavy media consumption to their teachers and to their parents. But to be truly effective we must also communicate to parents how important it is that they support children’s attempts to go cold turkey.