Children's culture includes children's cultural artifacts, children's media and literature, and the myths and discourses spun around the notion of childhood. Children's culture has been studied within academia in cultural studies, media studies, and literature departments. The interdisciplinary focus of childhood studies could also be considered in the paradigm of social theory concerning the study of children's culture.
Children's cultural studies In recent years, cultural studies scholars from various fields of study have deconstructed and assessed sociological issues specifically dealing with children's roles within a society's culture. The phrase "children's culture" was made most popular by a body of works known as The Children's Culture Reader. The collection, edited by MIT's Henry Jenkins, features various scholars discussing cultural themes about childhood and what it means to be a child. Jenkins describes the collection as being "about how our culture defines what it means to be a child, how adult institutions impact children’s lives, and how children construct their cultural and social identities".Ed. Jenkins 1998. These scholars view children as “active participants” that possess social and political "agency," American historian Steven Mintz echoes that critics of children's culture focus on commercialization, commodification, and colonization of childrenMintz S. 2009.
More recently, media studies scholars such as Rebecca Hains, Sharon Mazzarella, and Nancy Jennings have called for cultural studies approaches to exploring how children's consumer culture, media, and toy marketing are interrelated. They have published edited collections such as The Marketing of Children's Toys: Critical Perspectives on Children's Consumer Culture and Cultural Studies of LEGO: More Than Just Bricks to fill these gaps in the literature.
Socialization of children Consumer socialization and consumerism are concerned with the stages by which young people develop consumer related skills, knowledge, and attitudes. In a retrospective study, written by University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management Chair of Marketing, Deborah Roedder John looks at 25 years of research and focuses her discussion on, "children's knowledge of products, brands, advertising, shopping, pricing, decision-making strategies, parental influence strategies, and consumption motives and values".John 1999. The model proposed for the development of consumer behavior is framed through the use of age-related patterns. Using characteristics of knowledge and reasoning and developmental mechanisms, cognitive and social stages are defined by way of Piaget's theory of cognitive development which describes developmental stages that are mastered as children obtain the ability to cognitively interpret mediated messages. She expands pulling from Information processing theories explaining the storing and retrieval of information.Roedder 1981. John references Robert L. Selmen, a Professor of Education, Human Development, and Psychology in Medicine at Harvard University discussing the development of social perspectives in young children.Selmen 1980.
Children's media studies
Children's studies relating to the media use and consumption, access and literacy, content and exposure are all themes found within the body of research concerning the habits of young people. Because of the rapidly evolving media environment researchers from various academic fields are seeking to understand beyond consumption, looking more at the depths of new media technologies that allow for mobility and differing capacities to communicate and interact.Buckingham, D., Banaji, S., Bur, A., Carr, D., Cranmer, S., & Willett, R 2005. In today's society young people have been reported to use fiveVillani M.D., Susan 2001. to sevenStrasburger, V. C., Jordan, A. B., & Donnerstein, E. 2010. to even seven and a halfRideout, V. J., Foehr, U. G., & Roberts, D. F. 2010. hours per day on average using media. Specifically entertainment medias including: television and bedroom TVs, cable/satellite, movies, music, computer, the Internet, video games (via online, CD-ROM, or gaming console), mobile/cellular phones, advertising, and print forms In today's society young people have been reported to use five. Other scholars, Wartella, Huston, Rideout, and Robb (2009), also call for more research specifically examining variances in content to assess quality versus quantity of consumption across media formats.Wartella, E., Huston, A. C., Rideout, V., & Robb, M. 2009.
Media literacy A research review done on behalf of Ofcom, an independent regulator in the U.K. communications industry, scholars from the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media Institute of Education, University of London researchers reviewed literature relating to children's media literacy focusing on the media formats of television, radio, internet, and the mobile telephone. The study also addressed various barriers to and enablers of usage and access, understanding, and creativity. Ofcom defines media literacy as "the skills and competencies needed to gain access to media content by using available technologies and associated software".
Media literacy encompasses concepts like 'net-literacy' and children being screen-wise versus book-wise,Livingstone, S., & Bovill, M. 2000. with scholars such as Renee Hobbs, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, advocating for increased attention to strategies for digital and media literacy. For example, Sonia Livingstone, a professor of Social Psychology and head of the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics, and her collaborator have long argued that screen formats are becoming increasingly critical to education, work and leisure and even forms of interaction and engagement. These scholars point to the importance of media and computer education, citing it as "essential for the acquisition of the necessary skills". The authors go on to say that at schools children need to be taught how to: "operate the technology so as to integrate the computer into their working and leisure lives," "handle processes of information search and information management, including the potential information overload," "critically appraise and assess the relative value of information from different sources," "gain competencies in understanding the construction, forms, strengths and limitations of screen-based contents, including the development of their own screen-related creative skills."Livingstone, S., & Bovill, M., 2000 (p. 52).
Access and usage In addressing various barriers to and enablers of media usage, access, understanding, and creative initiative all play their roles in media literacy. In order to access media there must be physical access and then the ability to manipulate the media. An emerging concept within the discussion of access and usage is the digital divide. The digital divide is the notion that people with less access have less opportunities to develop skills (p. 33). Roberts and Feohr (2008), refer to the term as, "variations in access (in homes, schools, or other public locations) to personal computers and allied technologies, such as Internet connections, according to differences in socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, gender, and geography (rural and urban location)".Roberts and Feohr, 2008 (p. 16). Despite the proliferation of new media for personal use, those children that reported they used the internet on a typical day at their schools has remained consistent at 19% in 2004 and 20% in 2009.Rideout, V. J. et al., 2010 (p. 21). Diversifying media landscapes have expanded the options young people have to consume. The Kaiser Family Foundation study that spans 10 years (1999-2009) highlights several areas in which media access has branched into new platforms including: the increase of high-speed home Internet access, the crossing over of television content available online, and the expansion of new applications such as social networking and YouTube. The same Kaiser study from 2010 highlights computer and internet access of children based on ethnicity and level of parents' education. 94% of white children have computer access and 88% have internet access, compared to Hispanics' 92% computer and 74% internet, and Blacks’ 89% computer and 78% internet access. When looking at levels of parents' education, of those that had a high school education or less 87% had computer access and 74% had internet access, 94% of those that had some college had computer access and 84% had internet, versus the 97% computer and 91% internet access to those children whose parents had a college education (p. 23).
Entertainment media Common Sense Media conducted a 2012 study that specifically examined what they defined as children's entertainment media, which consisted of "TV shows, music, video games, texting, iPods, cell phone games, social networking sites, apps, computer programs, online videos, and websites used for fun".Rideout, V., 2012. In a similar study in 2010, the Kaiser researchers defined recreational media as, "non-school related media use" (p. 6). Bee and Boyd (2010) specifies entertainment media only as: television, movies, MP3 players, video games, and computers.Bee, H., & Boyd, D., 2010 (p. 379). While interest in areas of newer forms of entertainment media are expanding, television still has the most predominant effects.Singer, D. G., & Singer, J. L., 2005. Easily accessible at home, TV's incorporation of sound and digital images make for an entertaining medium that has both informational and social values that other new media have not yet tapped.Singer, D. G. et al., 2005 (p. 63). From an interpersonal communication standpoint, Stanford scholars discussing media multitasking versus face-to-face multitasking observed girl's media use across several similar platforms including: video and video games, listening to music, e-mailing and posting on social network sites, texting and instant messaging, talking on phones, and video chatting.Pea, R., Nass, C., Meheula, L., Rance, M., Kumar, A., Bamford, H., . . . Zhou, a. M. 2012. According to Livingston and Bovill of the London School of Economics and Political Science, almost all (99%) of 6-17 year olds watch television in their leisure time, over four in every five watch videos (81%), two-thirds play computer games (64%), almost nine in ten (86%) listen to music (often while doing something else), just over half (57%) read books that are not for school, a third (36%) use a personal computer (PC) not for games in their leisure time, and one in five (19%) personally use the Internet somewhere (mostly in school).
New media technology The longitudinal study from Kaiser saw a drop in usage of the more traditional form of regularly scheduled broadcast TV by almost half an hour from 3 hours and 4 minutes to 2 hours and 39minutes; however, that statistic alone can be deceiving because the consumption of TV content has actually increased daily TV consumption by 38 minutes. Newer forms of media have allowed children to consume television in several ways. Now 8-to 18-year-olds are watching an average of 24 minutes a day of TV/movies on the Internet, 15 minutes watching on cell phones, about 16 minutes watching on iPods. Time-shifting technologies (On Demand, TiVo, DVR/VCR) are also changing how children watch TV. While 59% watch TV traditionally, 41% of consumption is now time-shifted or occurs on a platform other that a TV set. In terms of ownership of these new media technologies, from 2004 to 2009 cell phone ownership has increased from 39% to 66% and iPods and MP3 players saw the most significant increases of 18% to 76% ownership.Rideout, V. J., et al., 2010 (pp. 3, 15)
Era of media and technology