week 10: technology children and the media

phones and screens in childhood - observer 2009

• children do not just struggle paying attention in class - there are developmental problems too

  • children can’t dress themselves or use the toilet properly when they arrive at school (age 5)

  • the ability to do that isn’t lost - these kids are just never taught how

  • not a problem of poverty - most of these kids are from houses where there are lots of screens and consoles

  • “no adults who are prepared to give their time and energy to raise children properly” - ipad is taking the place of actual parenting

• technological boom - loads of kids and teens having phones - coiciding with massive mental health crisis

• 25th july 2025 - law comes into force, social media must hide upwards of 40 topics from the profiles of under 18s

this lecture:

• is this still the case?

• is it the parents fault that this is a problem?

• why is this a problem?

• are there invisible drivers?

invisible drivers can’t happen in a vacuum - important to consider the context children grow up in and exist in politically and sociologically

previous psychologists have focussed on child’s social context within their peer group or family or important people - cognitive/evolutionary/psychodynamic

• actually children are intimately involved in technology/consumerism/capitalism

75% of child oriented programmes are watched w/o adult present. average 3-4 year old spends 3 hours a day in front of a screen. domestic viewing is becoming more solitary

developmental psychology is really poor at relating to this because it’s preoccupied with individual issues - doesn’t contextualise the child widely enough

• more influenced by their engagement with media than with people

• vygotsky touches on this - cultural context, development occurs between the child and environment

globalisation - spread of science and technology from developed parts to less developed parts

• benefits include:

  • spread in industrial technology

  • increase in productivity

  • sharing medical knowledge

  • economic interdependence discourages war

• process of globalisation is largely driven by western governments - spread of local and global anglo-american capitalism

neoliberalism = government is not a good thing - the smaller the government the better

• big government interferes with people’s freedom and leads to a poor economy

• we should trust companies to operate themselves and take responsibility for themselves

  • private water companies, post office, trains

  • this leads to things which should be for the people run for profit instead

• children are engaging with media in a solitary way is because of the way we run our economy

  • parents work more hours

  • far less regulation governing company conduct in the uk especially where that concerns selling things to people

  • has lead to growth of global consumer culture

  • sweden 1992 - banned advertising targeted at children under 12

consumer culture - developed following world war 2

• war provided a ready made want for new manufactured items

• 1950s production/consumption of goods grew massively - buying things became a patriotic act

• lots of adverts started being generated - if you’re buying things you strengthen your economy

• banks started offering people personal credit so people could afford non essential and quickly obsolete things like televisions to stimulate the economy

• cushman - you have to convince people they are missing something - push fomo

  • the empty self - your problems can be solved by diet/cosmetics/electronics/self improvement

    • you will be a better person, you will be more successful

• commercial culture makes the market seem like the prime site of personal happiness

• national advertising transformed people from citizens to customers

• increases consumerism - insatiability of needs and imperative to always be looking for more for their satisfaction

• children are flawed consumers - they cannot be cured by consuming

the problem with advertising to children is that they can’t decode advertising and realise that they’re being sold something which negatively affects development because they believe they are going without

the child as consumer:

• acceleration of child consumption in the last 30 years - symbolic resources for children’s self formation are increasingly commercial

  • insatiable city of needs

• children use objects/toys/games/adverts to make indications about themselves

  • eg school uniform to indicate social group (school)/socioeconomic status (rich school vs poor school, second hand uniform etc)

• consumer childhood is based on peer evaluation of consumer goods

• commodotoys - cycle of perpetual desire to have more. each toy is an advertisement and each act of consumption cannot be an end. sufficiency is unattainable

  • durkheim - to pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness

statistics:

• uk parents work third longest hours in eu - average worker in england needs to double their salary to keep up with house prices in their area

• children are therefore increasingly unsupervised and exposed to consumer culture

  • an adult is not there to decode advertising and explain it to them

• around the millenium, children began to be more solitary consumers - so average media consumption per day rises

• most kids are daydreaming a lot about being rich

consequences of this:

• increased risk of attentional decrements for every hour of tv watched

• kids more involved in consumer culture are more depressed and anxious, have lower self esteem and suffer more psychosomatic complaints

• consumer culture is the cause and not the consequence

adhd - 17% of children take medication for adhd

• in 10 years prescriptions for ritalin went from 6000 to 345000

• no medical test exists

• much higher levels of adhd in kids

• significant cerebellar atrophy in adhd people

• attentional deficits lead to higher rates of nicotine and cocaine dependency than unmedicated peers

commercialisation of school in america

• channel one news in schools - companies are allowed to operate in schools

  • delivers news with 2 minutes of commercials

  • put a free tv in every classroom on the condition that every day the schools play a 12 minute show of the news and then 2 minutes of ads - these schools take the equipment because they wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise

  • you couldn’t turn it down and it had to be aired

  • this was shown on 90% of all schools

  • advertisement included:

    • military recruitment

    • tobacco companies

    • fast food

    • trainers

  • no research on mental health effects on teenagers of this constant advertising

• school is a place to learn - a place of academic integrity where children take what they are told at face value to be true

  • that’s what makes it so powerful to show commercials at school

  • it creates materialism and stifles creativity

  • it then creates conflict between parent and child - mum can i have this

• teachers can’t stop the program once administrators have signed a channel one deal

• children are worse at detecting advertising in new media formats

• benefits

  • 46% of time that channel one is on, they’re doing something else anyway

  • channel one viewers know more about current news and show more interest

• downsides:

  • children in channel one schools rate advertised products more highly no matter what they are

  • greater intention to purchase and significantly more materialistic attitudes

  • food adverts prime children into eating more and becoming overweight

in the uk:

• sedentary children are often alone/unsupervised

• over 60% of adults are obese and one in five children start school already overweight

• unhealthy food/drink is advertised to children in non broadcast media eg internet/billboards

  • this isn’t allowed in television

• mixed messages to children

  • national healthy eating programme promoting healthy eating in schools

  • outside school children are shown engaging and persuasive advertising for junk food in unregulated industries

  • eat less move more - kids need to eat healthily but parents are not given the time or the salary to do this

  • children need to understand a complex set of interacting messages to balance consumer decisions and evaluate advertising critically

    • stop and think response - children need to develop self control and executive function to do this

    • they can’t recognise persuasive nature of adverts until 8-9 years old

children’s vulnerability to advertising

• flawed consumers are now vulnerable consumers

• contemporary media environment - subtle advertising in social media, billboards etc which is harder and harder to decode

• data is harvested for commercial purposes - what should we advertise to you specifically

• unhealthy food advertising affects children’s food preferences and purchase behaviour

the gendered body - dieting industry

• dieting industry makes money from body imagery and sexualising skinny bodies down to dangerously thin

• number one wish of girls 11-17 is to lose weight

• increases the risk of smokers - turning to smoking to lose weight

• the natural female body with fat on the stomach and thighs etc must be hidden and shamed so that there’s a problem and a desire for something

• manufactured inner emptiness - try disordered eating to fix the problem

• body image despair

• eating pathology now affects all racial and ethnic groups

  • occurs to some degree in children and adolescents from all four major us ethnic groups

  • risk factors vary per social/cultural/economic factors

• covid was weaponised against larger bodies - if you’re more overweight you’re more likely to die from covid

• confusing for kids - be dangerously skinny to fix yourself but here’s loads of junk food ads

mixed messages to adults

• parents, this is all your fault. you need to fix it

  • when kids are exposed at school away from you

  • when you work long hours/two jobs and both parents are doing this

  • you are used to relaxing and unwinding by using your phone

  • you aren’t with children when they watch tv because you’re making dinner etc

  • technology is so embedded in school/home life - your child will be left behind

messages sent to children cause conflict between children and parents - emotionally charged adverts - you need this because [reasons which relate to a child - you’ll be so cool, it’ll be so fun, all your friends will be jealous, your favourite character or celebrity has it] - leads to mum can i have this

• internal conflict for parents - i don’t want to give my child this/i can’t afford it but my child will be the weird one without it, saying no will cause tension and friction