Impact of Television and other Media on Children’s Development

Summary

Marilyn B. Benoit, M.D.

Definition of Media: Television, Computer Games, Internet, Music Videos & Songs, Video Games.

The debate over nature vs. nurture has come to an end with the research findings that show the undeniable influence of environmental factors on development.� The environment has its most direct influence through the turning on and turning off of genes. For example, DNA with its prescription for a particular trait can be switched on to make messenger proteins that then instruct our bodies to begin the process that results in the expression of a biological process, e.g. in the case of anorexia when the body is deprived of fat, though the genes are there for secondary sexual maturation, the hormones are not produced to initiate that maturational process. That is an example of the microenvironment of the individual’s physiology. The other environments we must consider are the familial environment and the macroenvironment of the cultural and societal contexts within which children live.

The Decade of the Brain brought us great advances. In fifty years we have gone from Erikson’s Childhood and Society to the Institute of Medicine’s Neurons to Neighborhoods. We now know that the brain has a dynamic relationship with its environment, and that it continues to both influence how the person interacts with his environment as that environment itself modifies the architecture of the brain. This has led to the concepts of critical or sensitive periods and developmental plasticity which refer to the brain’s ability to utilize the environment to do some amount of restructuring, and that there are indeed critical periods when essential brain infrastructure is laid down. For example, the early childhood development research has demonstrated that active environmental stimulation is necessary in the infant and preschool years in order to set the course for optimal brain development, regardless of the inherited intelligence potential.� The take home message here is that the environment matters.

Maria Montesorri and Piaget both recognized the impact of environment on brain development. Montesorri spoke about the environment as providing the building blocks for the “mental flesh” of the brain. Piaget used the term schemata to refer to the internal representations that are the brain’s recognition system that allows a child to relate to the familiar and move to understanding the unfamiliar.� Neuroscience literature describes� “neural networks” (essentially webs of interconnecting nerve fibers) in the brain which really seems compatible with Piaget’s schemata. The neuroscience mantra “neurons that fire together wire together” is one that helps us to understand the concept of associative memory, and why it is that the more sensory systems that are recruited in an activity the more reinforced the memory for that event is. From the trauma literature we have learned that painful events (both physically and psychologically) can result in memory impairments and long lasting structural brain changes. Pleasurable events, on the other hand, are more reinforced in the memory system. The environment provides the stimulation through its content and context, accesses the brain via the sensory systems, and learning and behavior are reinforced if the experience is gratifying, and the more immediate and repetitive the gratification the better.�

What personal skills do children need to enhance their functioning in the society as we know it today? They need to have a sense of mastery and competence. In order to achieve that they need most of all to acquire self-regulation. By this I mean the ability to manage their mood states, their anxieties, their impulsivity and their general behavior. They need to develop the capacity to self soothe in the face of disappointment. They need to develop frustration tolerance and manage delay of gratification. They need to develop a motivational system that moves them in a prosocial direction and enhances adaptive functioning. It’s what Daniel Goleman refers to as emotional intelligence. They are not born with these skills. Regardless of their biological endowment, regardless of their socioeconomic status and their racial or ethnic backgrounds, the environment plays a significant role in their eventual outcomes.

So what does television and other media have to do with children’s development? Everything! The electronic media industry which includes television, videos, computers, and the internet have a major presence in our children’s world in America. The extent of their impact on any given child’s development will vary depending on a variety of factors. These factors are the traits of individual child such as temperament, resilience, psychological vulnerabilities, and overall developmental level. The family context plays a significant role in how children will perceive, interpret and respond to the media. It used to be that parents had the singular role of being the protective barrier between the outside world and their children. In the early days of television when a family had a single television and the number of shows was limited, parents could still manage to control their children’s exposure to what came into the home. The family’s own “baseline” functioning sets the stage for how media are used within the family environment. Are they used for education about life events or specific topics? Are they used to minimize interaction between and among the family members? Do children have their own entertainment centers in their bedrooms? The media ultimately affect how children develop empathy, manage conflictual situations, attempt to negotiate and compromise, their sensitivities to others, and how well they embrace diversity in our human family.

These media have an impact on children’s learning, behavior, their affective or feeling states, their physiological arousal, their expectations, their motivation, their aggression, their choices as consumers, their interpersonal relationships, their health status, their sleeping behaviors, their sexual behavior, their drug, alcohol and tobacco use and on their prosocial vs antisocial development. There is no doubt that television, computers, videos and the internet have all contributed to dissemination of important information and will continue to be all mainstream vehicles of communication for a while to come, and, as with the print medium, they can all be used in negative ways. As we have pornography in print so too it comes on TV, in videos and on the internet. The difference is that we are operating in a culture where rapid and global dissemination is possible, and in America in a free market economy where the advertising industry dominates all forms of media with “direct to consumer marketing.”�� In America children of all ages are less supervised, and the media industry has resisted making any significant changes that would be protective of children and youth.�

The multimedia environment of sight and sound, combined with being sedentary for long periods of time while eating high fat, high calorie, low nutritious foods and drinks which are pleasurable, creates a powerful learning experience for our children. But are they learning what we wish they would? Schools cannot compete with such an experience and I often wonder if our children’s common complaint of being bored is not related to the “entertainment factor” so everpresent in the media. I visited one child’s school to observe him recently and I was overstimulated by all the visuals in the classroom. The children meanwhile were working on their spelling using computers where the words were speeding past them and they had to recognize the correctly spelt word. I thought to myself that maybe it is now necessary for this generation of children who are been raised on playstations and game boys to have such tools for learning. I did question what effect the removal of the teacher from the learning equation may have on other factors such as the seeking of approval within an attachment relationship that emotionally matters. Young children learn best within the context of a nurturing relationship with a significant adult. Could we be imposing technology upon them too soon? My grandniece recently started first grade. I asked her what she would be learning in first grade and her rapid and spontaneous response was “technology.” Obviously this was promoted as the highlight of the coming academic year! Steve Toomey, a cartoonist, captured the lure of the internet with his cartoon in which he portrayed a very young angry boy leaving the family dinner table pouting and saying “Well, I will just go and talk to my chat room family!”

This presentation will address the issues mentioned and invite discussion from the audience. Since Mexico is considered a developing country, my challenge to the audience will be to think about prevention interventions that can be initiated to minimize the potential negative effects on Mexico’s children.