Effect of Media on Children

Effect of Media on Children

            Children’s growth and development not only include physical changes but also changes in their personality, thinking, emotions, behavior, and speech as they begin to interact more with the world and understand how it works. Various factors contribute to these changes, and it is the role of parents to ensure that their children are only exposed to elements that positively influence them. As the use of technology proliferates the everyday lives of families, the media’s influence on the psychosocial development of children is significant. Parents find it difficult to control their children’s exposure to the media; hence many children spend hours in front of the television and computers and on their phones from a formative age. Although there are benefits that accrue from the media, early and uncontrolled exposure could have adverse psychosocial effects in terms of their ability to create and maintain relationships due to an impact on their attention span, social skills, and the results of cyberbullying.

The influence of media on children’s development can be traced back to hundreds of years. However, in recent decades, media technology innovations have been more frequent, and the society is rapidly adopting its use of internet technologies. Children between the ages of eight to eighteen years spend more than seven and a half hours a day using media outside of school, the most time spent in any activity (Rideout, Foehr, Roberts, 2). This adoption of technology is highly accelerated such that children as young as six years old can comfortably use various forms of media applications that even their parents are not aware of their existence. This thus makes it more difficult for parents to regulate their children’s exposure to programs that will only have positive influences. Hence, although the media can be a way in which children’s learning, creativity, communication, education, opportunities, and communication can be enhanced, it can also adversely affect how they relate with others.

Over the years, National Health Surveys and other studies indicate an increase in the diagnosis of attention deficit disorders or most of its related symptoms directly linked to the frequent use of the internet, especially among adolescents (Swing et al., 215). Difficulties in organizing tasks or forgetting responsibilities are attention problems associated with internet addiction. Digital media is highly competitive when it comes to getting the attention of its users. Therefore, most of the time, it makes an individual lose focus on what they were doing. For example, a student may be doing homework then they hear a notification sound from their phone. The student will most likely rush to check the notification and later on, get lost in other things found on the internet. In the same way, it can affect how children relate with their peers and parents.

Long and meaningful conversations cannot be undertaken as any notifications that are received can disrupt them. It is also difficult for a child or student to fight the urge to go through their phone, which makes the situation worse. In social events, most students can be found using their phones instead of living in the moment and making an effort to enjoy where they are or the people around them. This is because they quickly get bored, and instead of trying to change their perspective, they find it easier to either text their friends or browse through what the internet has to offer. Some theories propose that television and video games are stimulating such that children find it challenging to concentrate on less exciting activities such as social activities (Swing et al., 215). Relationships with parents are poor, as children do not give their parents the time to interact with them as they always view the media as more important. Families thus end up having poor relationships, and this can further affect the relationships that children have with other people.

Social media has become the primary means of communication among peers, acquaintances, and even families. This has trickled down to affecting relationships and decreasing the quality of interpersonal communications. Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at UCLA College, conducted psychological research whose results concluded that when children use digital media as a replacement for face-to-face interactions, they spend less time actually developing social skills and their ability to read non-verbal cues (Uhls et al., 389). The study entailed two sets of students; one confined in a camp without any access to the media, whereas the others stayed at home and used electronic devices. The research found that media decreased the sensitivity of children to emotional cues hence reducing their social skills.

In-person communication allows conveyance of social information through visual and vocal cues. Nonverbal communication is an integral part of social interaction as it acts as a signifier of how to adjust one’s behavior in response to how others react. The ability of an individual to process these emotional cues is dictated by social, personal, and academic outcomes. Children who spend less time on digital communications and more on in-person conversations can effectively process these cues, thus develop advanced social skills. This further enables them to form meaningful relationships with a diversity of people. The extensive use of digital communication by children prevents them from engaging in face-to-face experiences vital for the development of these social skills.

Bullying is a factor that negatively affects the psychosocial development of children and causes them to have social issues such as anxiety, lowered self-esteem, isolation, and depression, which can persist into adulthood (Bowes et al., 3). Cyberbullying is the use of digital media to communicate embarrassing, false, or hostile information about another person and mostly affects teenagers. In the digital world, it is becoming easier than ever for kids and teenagers to bully their peers, as they do not experience the visual or physical reactions of the victim. According to the Cyberbullying Research Center, 11.5% of students revealed to have been bullied at least once online or through text (“Cyberbullying Facts – Cyberbullying Research Center”). Moreover, the media allows some forms of anonymity, and the humiliating information, which is difficult to retrieve, spreads quickly to a large number of people. Several studies found a causal relationship between media victimization and depression in children.

Victimization affects the self-esteem of the target, causing them to withdraw from their peer networks socially. When a student knows that most people in their school know about a piece of embarrassing information that was spread, they begin to experience anti-social behavior. The only alternative they feel they have is to keep to themselves. The feeling of being alone and having no one to rely on further affects the relationships they have with their friends and even parents who, most of the time, are not aware of what is going on. Anxiety also creeps in, as they cannot dare to face other students (Bowes et al., 4). It becomes hard for them to engage in regular class activities, such as making presentations in front of their classmates. The situation could even escalate to the point where they fail to go to school and even switch schools.

Although several merits can be attributed to the use of media, especially in its use as a form of educational tool, unregulated exposure can adversely affect the psychosocial development of children. This further leads to a decline in the ability of these children to engage in meaningful conversations with not only their peers but also parents, teachers, and relatives. A reduction in their attention span, effects of cyberbullying, and a lack of adequate social skills are the main effects of excessive media usage, which significantly affects the social lives of these children.

Works Cited

Bowes, Lucy, et al. “Peer victimisation during adolescence and its impact on depression in early adulthood: prospective cohort study in the United Kingdom.” British journal of sports medicine 50.3 (2016): 176-183.

“Cyberbullying Facts – Cyberbullying Research Center”. Cyberbullying Research Center, 2020, https://cyberbullying.org/facts.

Rideout, Victoria J., Ulla G. Foehr, and Donald F. Roberts. “Generation M 2: Media in the Lives of 8-to 18-Year-Olds.” Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (2010).

Swing, Edward L., et al. “Television and video game exposure and the development of attention problems.” Pediatrics 126.2 (2010): 214-221.

Uhls, Yalda T., et al. “Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues.” Computers in Human Behavior 39 (2014): 387-392.