by Dr. Wayne Warburton It is almost impossible to stop children accessing media, so it is important for parents to help children become healthy consumers of media. Children understand that smoking is harmful to your health, that chocolate is a sometimes food but that vegetables are everyday foods, and many other facts that they internalise as they learn to self-regulate their behaviour.

Parents and teachers can help children self-regulate media in the same way. The ‘you are what you eat’ principle applies as much to life experience as it does to eating, as the brain wires up in response to what we experience in our daily lives, day in and day out until we die. This process of ‘wiring up’ is particularly vigorous and important in children.

For this reason, it is good practice in my view, for parents to monitor and assist children with what they experience in media, helping them to understand and self-regulate their exposure.

9 Tips…

1.    Take the time to sit with kids and experience media with them, and talk about what they have seen and heard;

2.    Choose programs for kids such as ABCs Behind the News (BTN) rather than the ‘adult news’ so that they are more likely to understand and process news and current affairs in a positive and helpful way;

3.    Continue the discussions away from the media source itself, such as at dinner, or in general conversation;

4.    Question the messages.  The Center on Media and Children’s Health at Harvard (CMCH) advises, and I agree, that “Teaching your children to question the media messages they see and hear is important.

Since they are surrounded by media every day, knowing how to see behind these messages will allow them to grow up safe and healthy in the Information Age”. This means teaching your kids to think critically about the media and talking to them about how media is produced.

5.    Encourage kids to create their own media and report on what they see;

6.    Use Digital recorders to record programs that are helpful (such as BTN) as a way for both parents and their children to have some control over what children watch;

7.    Encourage children to spend time in the real world as well as learning about it via third party sources such as media coverage.

That is, encourage kids to limit their time spent with media in order to spend time engaging with the world around them. Often, time spent doing other things with your kids, such as cooking, or playing or walking, provide a valuable time for kids to talk about the things they are thinking about, what they are afraid of, what is happening in the wider world.

In addition, actually going to the museum, the art gallery, a farm, or other places that feature things your children have found interesting in the media can add further depth to their understanding, provide opportunities to talk, and may help kids get a wider perspective about some of the things they may be anxious about.

8.    Model good media use. I agree with the CMCH view that “Parents can model healthy media habits in a number of ways:

a.    By limiting their own media use.
b.    By exercising good judgment about the programs they watch when their children are present.
c.    By co-viewing, or watching TV with their children and discussing what they are watching together. In this way, parents can model critical thinking about media content.
d.    By modeling alternative activities, such as reading, playing sports, or participating in community activities.

9.    Be careful that what kids are exposed to is appropriate for their age (i.e., they are old enough to make sense of it with parental assistance, and are not likely to be disturbed by it or form incorrect ideas about themselves or the world).

How can parents tell what is age-appropriate?

The research on children and the media suggests a number of things relating to age.  At any age, media with pro-social themes leads to pro-social attitudes and behaviours, and media with anti-social themes leads to antisocial attitudes and behaviours. In terms of the child’s developing network of ideas and beliefs and typical behavioural responses, the content of media is everything;

Under 2:

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under 2 should have little or no exposure to media;

Under 4:

Very young children are particularly vulnerable to scary visual images, and when certain footage (such as coverage of natural disasters) is repeated many times, they are likely to think the event is actually happening over and over again. It is important for parents to restrict viewing to such coverage (preferred) or to be with children to explain what is happening.

Up to the age of 4 or so, it is hard for a child to take another’s perspective. Empathy develops in children at around four or so, at which time they start to learn how to take another’s perspective. It helps empathy development if parents and teachers discuss what they are feeling and thinking in response to another person’s situation ftom early in the child’s life, and point out how another person might be thinking and feeling in a particular situation.

Exposure to a lot of violent media tends to decrease empathy, and much adolescent and adult media contains a lot of violence, so helping the child to be empathic during media exposure from an early age is helpful.

Under 8:

Up to the age of 8 or so, children are ‘concrete’ thinkers. They take things at face value and assume that what they hear is literally true. For this reason, media with subtle or abstract messages needs to be explained in a concrete way that the child can understand. Exposure to good quality media is important under the age of eight, and parental/teacher guidance through news and current affairs is definitely helpful.

In terms of viewing news events that are upsetting, many older children (4-5+) will be upset by the fact that the people affected look just like them and their families. Stories of children being injured or separated from their parents, the death of family pets and interviews with emotionally distraught or shocked adults and children can make their world feel more unsafe than it really is. Again, parents need to use good judgement about what the child is allowed to see, and about co-viewing such material with them.

Age 8-12:

Kids are developing abstract thought and are better able to make sense of subtle or abstract information in media. Parental/teacher guidance is still very important at this age.

Age 12-16:

This is a time when kids are much less influenced by parents and much more influenced by peers and popular culture. Parents will have much less say on what their children see and hear in media, and so good self-regulation with media is helpful before this age.

It is at this age that adolescents are really trying to work out their own identity, and media will be a big part of this. Their music will be a big part of their group identity, and news and current affairs may have a strong effect on the child’s developing ideals and core identity.

Even though teenagers will often reject or fight against parental advice or directives on what media they can and cannot experience, 12-16 year olds are still adolescents. The human brain is not ‘mature’ until about 25, and so up until that age humans are not fully equipped to deal with things emotionally or to control their own behaviour at maximal levels.

This means that parents can help their kids by continuing to assist them develop good media habits - by setting some limits on exposure, continuing to experience media with their children (music, video games, movies and television), and continuing, where possible, to talk through the themes.

Resources:

•    The Australian Council for Children and the Media site website has comprehensive reviews of children’s movies and clear advice on what is developmentally appropriate for children.

•    The Center on Media and Children’s Health (CMCH) at Harvard also has comprehensive resources for people interested in media.

Articles in this series:

Floods and Other Catastrophes: Helping Kids Cope
How Kids Can Learn from Current Event

About the author:

Dr Wayne Warburton is a lecturer in developmental psychology with the Department of Psychology and is the Deputy Director of the Children and Families Research Centre at Macquarie University (Sydney). Wayne is also a registered psychologist, and is a consumer representative on the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman’s governing council. He has a number of publications in scientific journals and books, primarily on topics around aggressive behaviour.  Link: http://www.iec.mq.edu.au/research/cfrc/staff_profiles/warburtonW.htm

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