Throughout this essay, I am going to be exploring the heavily debated question ‘do the media have harmful effects on children?’. ‘The entire study of mass communication is based on the premise that there are effects from the media, yet to be the issue on which there is least certainty and least agreement’ (McQauil, 2005), many different scholars have studied the effects of media and there never seems to be one single answer to solve the issue. ‘Among those who investigate media’s effects on children, the generally accepted, though far from consensual ‘answer’, is that children are particularly vulnerable to media influence and further that the media do harm some children, in some ways, under conditions (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). This simply means that depending on the child’s upbringing and the things they have been exposed to growing up they will have varied reactions to different media content. In this essay, I will be looking at the media theory approachled by Albert Bandura during the early 1960’s‘the bobo doll experiment’ to explain the effects media has on children and then comparing it to the cultural study approach ‘encoding and decoding’ by cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall in 1973. I will then go onto explore the ways in which children are protected from harmful media content through media regulation and parental control.
‘Experiments have been one of the most durable forms of trying to demonstrate direct effects of media on behaviour.’ (Davies, 2010) an example of an experiment in which children are exposed to aggression and then allowed to behave similarly afterwards is ‘the bobo doll experiment’. The study was carried out with 48 boys and 48 girls, aged between 3 and 5 in Stanford University Nursery School. The children were put into four groups for the experiment. The first group were subjected to watching an adult act aggressively towards a Bobo doll in person, the second saw the same behaviour but it was filmed and carried out between real people, the third group saw the same behaviour again but filmed and carried out by a cartoon cat and finally the fourth group saw no aggressive behaviour. Children in all four groups were given the chance to act in the same way with a similar Bobo doll to what the first group encountered and the acts of aggression from the boys and the girls were collated separately then compared against one another. In conclusion to the experiment, two out of three hypotheses were supported by the results, ‘do ‘real life’ models have more effect than filmed ones?’ and ‘boys would be more aggressive than girls’ however there was one comparison in which girls acted more aggressively and this was when a female model performed the aggression. The third hypothesis, ‘did children copy aggressive models?’, was not supported.
The experiment’s results showed that a lot of the children, both boys and girls, when allowed to act aggressively carried out ‘non-imitate aggression’ which tells us the children were aggressive regardless of what they were exposed to. This demonstrates that experiments like this tackle pressing questions like: is the media harmful to children backwards? ‘Media researchers have started at the wrong end of this question; they begin with the idea that the media is to blame and then try to make links back to the world of actual violence’ (Barker and Petley, 2001). This suggests that ‘research should logically begin with the people who engage in those actions’ (Barker and Petley, 2001) therefore we should gain understanding of children’s motives to carry out harmful behaviour by researching things like their influences and backgrounds rather than simply blaming the media with evidence that is inclusive. The problem with media effects research like ‘the bobo doll effect’ is that ‘media effects research usually employs methods which will not allow children to challenge this assumption’ (Barker and Petley, 2001) of the harmful effects stemming from the media and researchers ‘often talk about the amount of violence in the media, encouraging the view that is it not important to consider the meaning of the scenes involving violence’ (Barker and Petley, 2001).
In comparison to media effects research, cultural studies approaches such as ‘encoding and decoding’ take the blame for social problems in children away from the media and places it on the individuals causing said social problems. Cultural studies develop on the idea that children have ‘diverse ways in which they make sense of what they watch’ (Buckingham, 1996) they understand that each child is an individual and able to make ‘complex moral decisions about what they should watch’ (Barker and Petley, 2001). The ‘encoding and decoding model’ is a circuit made up through production, circulation, consumption and reproduction. This simply means that media producers make their content with preferred messages and aims encoded into them, their content is then distributed and circulated amongst the public who then consume the media and decode their own interpretations of what the messages and aims to then reproduce their own actions and opinions from said media content. This model supports the statement ‘there is no such thing as ‘violence’ in the media which can have harmful or beneficial-effects’ (Barker and Petley, 2001) and same goes for all ‘harmful’ behaviour exposed through the media because each individual consumer takes their own interpretation of what they consume and these interpretations are different amongst each individual due to ‘economic, social and cultural inequality’ (Oliver and Nabi, 2009).
Evidence linking to the ‘encoding and deciding’ model is Buckingham’s research that shows ‘children have a wide range of strategies to protect themselves from or deal with negative responses’ (Buckingham, 1996) he goes on to explain these strategies were ‘partial or total avoidance of potentially upsetting programmes to actively denying their reality status (‘it’s only a movie’)’ (Buckingham, 1996). However, there is evidence to show ‘factual material such as news coverage of wars and disasters were described as upsetting’ (Buckingham, 1996) and this type of media content is seen as important to watch due to it informing the public of real life social problems which brings in the conclusion that ‘negative responses are common amongst young children, though they are rarely severe or long-lasting’ (Buckingham, 1996) due to each child’s growing understanding of right and wrong through their cultural and social influences.
When thinking about the effects media have on children and the speculation surrounding the topic the first thing that comes to mind is that ‘when media attention is directed towards children, it often situates them as a problem demanding urgent intervention’ (Davies, 2010). The most common intervention between harmful media content and children encountering it is regulation. Media regulation in the UK are codes of practise drawn up and enforced by a variety of bodies which are either entirely or partly independent. These codes of practise have come about following concerns from the public about media being appropriate and safe for its consumers. There are many different regulatory bodies in the UK all monitoring different types of media produced, the main four being ‘Press complaints commission (PCC)’ which is an independent self-regulatory body which deal with complaints linked to newspapers and magazines in the version of both print and online. ‘Office of Communications (Ofcom)’ a body which regulates television, radio, fixed line telecoms, mobiles and the airwaves over which wireless devices operate. ‘Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)’ a self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry. They are a non-statutory organisation and therefore cannot interpret or enforce legislation. Then lastly the ‘British Board of Film classification (BBFC)’ a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry that is responsible for the national classification of films. The body has statutory requirements to classify videos, DVDs and some video games under the Video Recordings Act 2010. This intervention from regulatory bodies happens due to the fact that ‘children are seen as vulnerable, because of their youth and dependency, and the ways in which this vulnerability (both physical and emotional) is defined affects everything we say about them and their culture’ (Davies, 2010). An example of this would be how from such a young age of nursery years, nursey staff will avoid branding one child as ‘bad’ and another as ‘good’ due to the risk of said child growing up thinking they are a ‘bad’ and ‘negative’ person and that’s how it’s going to be from then on and visa versa for branding a child as ‘good’.
Leading on from this, the other intervention between children and harmful media is parental and authority figures in said child’s life. Although there are regulatory bodies in place to stop children accessing media content that is said to have ‘harmful effects’ on children they can still get access to it due to ‘media convergence and internet technology threatening traditional regulatory structures’ (Simmons, 2009). Speculation states that ‘availability as well as greater affordability has provided easier access to media for children’ (Eval, 2016). The beneficial effects of this are said to have ‘included early readiness for learning, educational enrichment, opportunities to view or participate in discussions of social issues, exposure to the arts through music and performance and entertainment’ (Eval, 2016). In addition, why must we shame the media for possible, however un-evident, ‘harmful effects’ instead of praising them for the positive, beneficial effects that generations previous didn’t have the privilege of?
It’s the growth of easy accessibility to harmful media which is causing parental control to be a more common practise. Also, there is the fact that some parents will allow children to access media content that is deemed inappropriate and unsuitable for their children due to their own opinions on what they feel their children are emotionally and physically capable of consuming. The fact that ‘parents are more likely to express concerns about the possible effects of television on other people’s children than on their own’ (Buckingham, 1996).This could be due to the fact ‘concerns may be raised about their behaviour (such as with regards to crime, truancy, eating disorders, spending habits or media tastes and preference) (Davies, 2010) which also touches on the statement that ‘everything we do to, with and for our children is influenced by capitalist market conditions and the hegemonic interest of ruling corporate elites’ (Zipes, 2002). This explains that parents are forced into worrying and controlling their children’s access to media content because of both cultural and media studies into the effects being uncertain. When it comes to making decisions for other parent’s children, it can be argued that there is greater concern and worry due to the fact they are not solely responsible for that child and will not be the one dealing with the supposed ‘harmful effects’ later, after the said media is consumed by that child.
It is said that ‘each new medium of communication that has emerged over the past century and more has generated concern over its alleged negative effect on children’ (Simmons, 2009). The key word in this statement is ‘alleged’, as it highlights the fact that the concerns about media effects on children is unsolved, despite the efforts to come up with a definitive answer to them. It is thought that the people claiming media has harmful effects on children are the same people that ‘for centuries asked if human illnesses, the death of pigs, thunderstorms and crop failures were the result of witchcraft’ (Barker and Petley, 2001), this statement tell us that just like witchcraft had no influence on human illnesses, the death of pigs, thunderstorms, crop failures and anything else for that matter the media has no influence on children negative or positive. Therefore ‘the claims about the possible ‘effects of violent media are not just false, they range from the daft to the mischievous’ (Barker and Petley, 2001).
In conclusion to the question ‘do the media have harmful effects?’, based on the existing research explored throughout this essay, it could be argued that although there are ‘much less frequent positive accounts of children’ (Davies, 2010) having beneficial effects from the media documented, it can be said to be due to the way effects research is carried out backwards. ‘Based on continued inconclusive media effects research and debates’ (Simmons, 2009), it may be argued that ‘for some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For some children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial’ (Schramm, Lyle and Parker, 1961). However, it should be applied to all media and not just television. It could then go on to be suggested that ‘although a great deal has been written about the effects of media on children there has been comparatively little critical attention to actual media producers’ (Davies, 2010), essentially stating that there is much research into the effects media has on children, carried out by many different scholars and academics, but yet it does not seem to pull the producers of said harmful media content up on the issue. Although there are regulations in place, due to the fact of how easy it is becoming with today’s advance in technology for children to gain access to inappropriate and unsuitable media content, it is down to each individual child’s parental figure to monitor and control the media their child accesses, whilst maintaining the thought of how it will affect them at the forefront of their mind. However, ‘such questions as how far you should restrict and protect children and how it may be possible to balance protection with rights, are complex and fraught with practical difficulties’ (Simmons, 2009) that each parent has to consider as well.
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