Toxic Childhood?
By Jayne Kirkham
Ever since I can remember there has been someone banging on about how bad television is for children. If I was old enough I would remember people banging on about the evils of the printing press. However, it cannot be denied that the modern western lifestyle is having a devastating, some would say ‘toxic’, effect on the health and wellbeing of our children. We’ve seen how mass produced food is harmful to kids, but what about the mass media? Is that as harmful? Is television ‘toxic’?
Academics such as Dr Aric Sigman would say yes and call for a ban on children watching television. But such an argument is simplistic and polarising and in this day and age of mass communication unrealistic. But those people, who choose to work in children’s entertainment, like any other child specialist care passionately about the well-being of children and want the very best for them. So it was that at the recent Showcomotion Conference, we brought together some of the most eminent child psychologists and media experts to discuss whether TV is bad for our children.
Professor Maire Messenger-Davies (Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster) pointed out that as a form of communication, TV is a vital modern tool for all ages and TV in the public service broadcast tradition is not just beneficial but immensely valuable. To illustrate, she spoke of the BBC drama “That Summer Day”; made as a response to children’s online requests to understand the London bombings two years ago.
However, Dr Richard House (Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy, Roehampton University) warned that we do not understand fully the physiological, emotional and spiritual impact of television, nor do we wholly understand the complexities and subtleties of child development. Therefore we should exercise caution with the quantity and content to which we expose children. He posed the question: “is there a cost?” and said we should look at what children are NOT doing when they’re watching TV. They are not developing real human relationships, and they are not playing, which is a central part of growth and development. Finally he felt that the exposure to adult programmes drags children into the adult world too soon.
While agreeing with Richard, Teresa Orange (Researcher and Author) said that we should learn from the mistakes made by the healthy eating campaigners whose oversimplification of the arguments led to the demonisation of Marmite and outlawed ‘going to work on an egg’. Much better to embrace the influence of TV and use for good the way it can manipulate hearts and minds. Teresa urged programme makers to consider what kids take away from a programme: how it develops language, evokes emotions, encourages relationships. Parents also need to do this bearing in mind the specific needs of their own child (Tracy Beaker is a brilliant window on an often unseen world for one child, for another it is a role model for bad behaviour).
Colin Ward (Youth TV Director, National Media Museum) agreed. Children deserve the best television and it is a magnificent resource. But he urged people not to look at programming in isolation but see how it affects children. He cited the research of Jackie Marsh at Sheffield University who has highlighted many of the benefits of television in child development and education. However, Colin acknowledged there were problems but these went beyond children. How can we stop children watching TV when adults watch so much more? The main influence on children is the behaviour of the adults closest to them. We make unhelpful choices in our lifestyles. TV fills the vacuum created when adults withdraw.
Professor Barrie Gunter’s (Professor of Mass Communications, University of Leicester) recent experiment for BBC’s Panorama (in which half of a class of 7-8 year olds had all screen-based devices removed from their homes) led him to also conclude that parents are more dependent on the TV than children. Without TV to baby sit, families came together in more creative, thoughtful activities but time starved parents felt the strain of having to meet their kids’ demands for attention and stimulation. Many of the adults realised how much they use the TV out of habit or as a control device. After the experiment, families chose not to get rid of the television but were much more thoughtful about the way they used it.
Janie Grace (Consultant and former Managing Director Nick UK) gave a timely reminder that under Article 17 of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to reliable information from the mass media. Television, radio and newspapers should provide information that children can understand and should not promote materials that could harm them.
It was agreed that television is an important and valuable part of kids’ lives but with the press only interested in bad stories, there is no sense of balance and parents have little media education. So much so that often adults don’t realise that despite exposure to materialism and commercialisation, they can protect their children by simply saying “No”. Children’s lifestyles are dictated by the lifestyles of their significant adults who too often are time short and anxious about perceived dangers outside the home. So while there are issues of quantity, there are also issues of confinement. It was pointed out that rather than the television, the car is the piece of technology that has most changed kids’ lives.
So then, while the Media is often tasked with solving the problems of society, our experts acknowledged that this is an impossible challenge. Much of the responsibility for the impact of television on children lies not with those in charge of programme making but those in charge of the audience. Quality kids’ programmes are good for our children and can enhance their lives. Television is only toxic when parents and caregivers abrogate responsibility for their children’s viewing habits and fail to set a good example: the isolationism of watching alone in their bedrooms, the dangers of watching adult programming unsupervised… If children are to experience all the benefits of television and be kept safe from the negatives, if they are to have happy and healthy childhoods then, it was agreed, adults need to grow up.
