Mass Media Consumption Among School Children

As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, kids are confined to their homes and face social isolation, leading to increased mass media consumption. The new report “Media Messages to Young Girls,” has examined how children learn the desirability of “looking sexy” from the mass media and how it undercuts their own self-confidence.

Children in their elementary have watched approximately four and a half hours of TV a day and see more than 75,000 examples of “sexy girl” role models a year. Exposure to sexy girl images is likely to balloon this fall as children spend more time with media.

“Media images will outnumber — and may outweigh — real-life interactions with children their own age,” Christia Spears Brown, a professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, said.

“For example, female characters continue to be underrepresented in the most popular TV shows for elementary school-age children. But when they are shown, they are often portrayed in a sexualized way,” Spears Brown explained. “Girls learn the rules quickly, that the way to achieve high status and popularity is to be sexy, even as they also tell them that sexy girls are not very nice, smart or athletic.”

During the reason, elementary-aged girls were given a “Fashion” Barbie to play with for five minutes. Later they were asked about their career aspirations; the responses were limited to those who played with a Mr. Potato Head. Though girls and boys consume the same amount of media, that extra dose of media exposure slows down the ongoing progress toward gender equality.

“The media want kids to do what they say, not what they show,” Stephanie Coontz, CCF director of research, said “But as every parent knows, kids pay more attention to what we practice than what we preach. This research shows that ‘the talk’ may be equality, but ‘the walk’ is something else entirely.”

Source-Medindia