Plugged In
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“Drip-Drip” Effects of Television
While Elkind, Meyrowitz, and Postman used the homogenization argument to explain how television altered notions of childhood, Meyrowitz offered a second explanation. He argued that it was not the broad accessibility of television but rather the representations of reality in television that influenced this change. According to Meyrowitz, the dominant portrayal of children in television was of outspoken, autonomous, headstrong, and worldly-wise beings who were smarter than their silly parents and other authority figures. Television thereby created a distorted reality that undermined the authority and prestige that historically characterized parents: “It is now difficult to find traditional adults in films or on television. In the age of the ‘anti-hero,’ adult characters—including many of those portrayed by Diane Keaton, Burt Reynolds, Chevy Chase, and Elliot Gould—often have the needs and emotions of overgrown children. Not only are adults often outsmarted by children in today’s motion pictures, but children are sometimes portrayed as more mature, sensitive, and intelligent.”15
Theories about the effects of media, especially from sociology, have pointed out that media are indeed capable of influencing the social order. These theories dealt less with the effects of media on the individual than with broader concepts and ideologies at work within a society. The theories postulated that the influence of media on the social order was rarely immediate, and if it occurred, it did so cumulatively, over a longer period. Such theories are sometimes referred to as “drip-drip” theories, using the analogy of water hollowing out a stone drop by drop.
One of the most cited sociological media effect theories is the cultivation theory of George Gerbner.16 In the late 1960s, Gerbner and his colleagues began with a series of content analyses that proved how sharply the reality shown on television differed from everyday reality. They demonstrated that compared with reality, television was more violent, included more men than women, and showed more traditional gender relationships. The same group of researchers likened the power of media to that of religion. As in religion, the continual repetition of patterns in the media (myths, ideologies, facts, and relationships) “serve[s] to define the world and legitimize the social order.”17
According to Gerbner and his colleagues, television and other media cultivate such a powerful shared culture that they are capable of leveling differences between the elite and the rest of the population. Anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, who comes into frequent contact with media sees the same distorted view of reality. Gerbner called this phenomenon, in which media contribute to the wiping out of differences between social groups, “mainstreaming.” Drip-drip theories such as Gerbner’s cultivation theory offer an explanation for how television, through its presentation of a distorted reality, contributed to the homogenization of parents and children.
Changes in Family Communication
Drip-drip theories typically acknowledge that the environment in which media effects occur also play a part in the process. While media are a significant cause of change in the social order, rarely are they the only one, or largest one. Thus, while the emergence of television likely contributed to changing notions of childhood, several other sociocultural factors may have strengthened this process. One particularly relevant factor has been a shifting balance of power in the family. Unlike the traditional “top-down” family communication style of the 1950s, today’s parents negotiate with their children about what they may and must do, and both parties have a say in the outcome. Parents feel it is important to involve their children in family decisions so that they can learn to make choices and develop their identities. The parental motto has changed from “behave yourself” to “be yourself.” Parents are more indulgent, feel guilty more often, and want the best for their children. They want to be “cool” parents, more their children’s friends than authority figures.
Interestingly, although these changes suggest that youth have the autonomy and empowerment that characterize adulthood at an increasingly early age, these same youth are delaying the responsibilities of adulthood, such as joining the labor market, being in a permanent relationship, having children, and more. The classical moratorium phase, as Erik Erikson called it—in which the young person is experimenting with his or her identity and is not taking any real responsibility—has thus become longer.18 This particularly seems to be the case among those youth whose families can provide them with continued financial support.19 For example, between 1968 and 2012, the percentage of American young people age 25–34 still living with their parents reached its highest ever rate (22 percent).20 In Italy, where more than half of those 18–35 still live at home, governmental policy is being drafted to stimulate this group of “bamboccioni” (big babies) to leave the parental home.
This process seems to be reinforced by the “privatization” of media use, which offers individual family members the opportunity to withdraw to their own personal spaces for entertainment and communication with people outside the family. Together, these developments constitute the paradox of childhood. Even though children today, with their outspokenness and grown-up looks, may indeed seem like miniature adults, as they did before Rousseau, and even though they have a strong need for autonomy earlier than they did before, their need for a carefree childhood seems stronger than ever.
Rapid Technological Changes as Cause
Like television and changes in family communication, the rapid technological changes of the past decades may have also contributed to our notions of childhood. In the late 1960s, the anthropologist Margaret Mead predicted that the young would eventually have a dominant role in society.21 Although Mead could not know precisely what contemporary parent-child relationships would look like, she hypothesized that they would change drastically and irreversibly after the 1960s. And her visionary predictions came true. We now see that youth culture has become the dominant culture in society. Parents seem to be conforming to their children’s fashion choices, behavior, and language. Being young is the norm and becoming old is to be avoided, as the Dutch writer Anna Enquist observed: “People dress like children, being old is reviled, and youth is glorified.”22
Mead’s predictions about the changes in youth culture were based on her observations of three types of cultures: post-figurative, co-figurative, and pre-figurative.23 In each culture a different age group functions as a role model. In a post-figurative culture such as a traditional society (and in the West until the 1950s), parents, with their wisdom and life experience, are the most important models. In such cultures, children are expected to follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents. Differences between older and younger generations are seen as temporary, age-related effects. In a co-figurative culture, seen in the tumultuous 1960s, adults and children orient themselves primarily to their peers. In the event of rapid technological changes, a post-figurative culture often changes into a co-figurative one. Since parents did not experience this type of change during their childhoods, they can no longer function as role models for the young. This forces young people to turn more to those of the same age. A co-figurative culture is temporary, according to Mead, a transition leading to a pre-figurative culture.
In a pre-figurative culture, youth are the dominant role model and they determine what happens. Mead predicted that the co-figurative society, in which she found herself at the time of her publication, was at the point of making the transition to a pre-figurative one. This step would result in a rigorous and irreversible change in the relationships between parents and children. As prescient as Mead was about this era, she could not have suspected how drastic the consequences of the rapid technological changes would be for the individual, family, and society.
And now, as we sit in this pre-figurative culture, youth may indeed be in a more dominant position than they used to be. Compared to earlier generations, they more often have a say in family decisions, they are more accustomed to being the center of attention, and they have more money to spend on their needs and wants.
This is due, in part, to their parents’ higher levels of income and education, in comparison with previous generations. Moreover, parents are having fewer children than in previous generations, leaving a greater portion of money available to youth. There are also more divorced parents and single-parent families. In these families, children take on independent roles earlier than before. And more than ever before, there are families in which both parents work outside the home. As a result of all of these factors, parents are more indulgent with their children, and will do a great deal to ensure that their children lack nothing.24
Commercialism as Cause
While the emergence of television and other sociocultural factors have influenced our modern view of childhood, commercialism—particularly the recognition that youth represent a major market—also played an important role in establishing this view. Widespread marketing aimed at the young dates from the 1950s, when advertisers used marketing techniques to promote comic books and films to teenagers. Yet marketing to kids and teens as we know it today took off only in the 1980s.
In this new world of kids and teen marketing, the paradigm of the assertive child prevails: children are kids, and kids speak up, and they are clever, autonomous, and shrewd. They are spoiled and difficult to please, and they unfailingly see through any attempts to cheat or manipulate them. According to Stephen Kline, kids and teen marketing has been able to flourish primarily because it has always taken children’s imaginations, heroes, and humor seriously, as well as their extreme sensitivity to peer pressure. More than any other social institution, the commercial world has recognized that children’s preferences are deeply rooted and must be taken seriously.25
The tendency of children to dress and behave more like adults has been intensified by marketing aimed at children. In the 1990s, the marketing world came up with a term to describe this phenomenon: KGOY (kids getting older younger). The “tween”—defined as children eight to twelve years old—is one exemplar of this KGOY phenomenon. While already reaching children in childhood and adolescence, marketers realized they could do a better job of attracting youth who were “between” childhood and adolescence. Referred to as tweens, this group—in part because of this commercialism—is no longer interested in toys such as Barbie dolls, as they were a generation ago. Instead, tweens prefer products with a social function, such as music, clothing, makeup, and social media, in which the focus is on the development of social relationships (see figure 2.2).
Just as the tween is emblematic of the KGOY phenomenon, a second striking change, also partly set in motion by marketing, is that children up to three years old have become a new, separate demographic. This trend began in the 1990s, when media researchers and the marketing world discovered that this age group has its own highly specific preferences and that its members are astonishingly brand aware.26 Before the 1990s there was hardly any commercial interest in infants and young toddlers. One important trigger of this change was the huge success of the BBC’s Teletubbies, launched in 1997, which quickly became a blockbuster hit. Although they may not have suspected beforehand, the show’s producers instigated a veritable revolution in the toddler media landscape. The successful merchandising of Teletubbies marked the real start of infant and toddler marketing.
With the mega success of Teletubbies, advertisers and TV producers quickly discovered an important new demographic, one having its own distinct preferences and exercising an enormous influence over its parents. Other initiatives followed at about the same time, such as Baby Einstein and Baby TV, aimed at even younger infants and their parents. Special marketing congresses organized around this time came with teasers along the lines of “Interested in reaching the youngest generation and their parents? Then don’t miss the meeting place for this sector!” Like tweens, infants and toddlers became an age group worth taking seriously.
Figure 2.2. Kids getting older younger: tweens as consumers. (Corbis)
Are Children Different from the Way They Used to Be?
It should now be clear that over the last few decades, childhood has undergone a paradoxical metamorphosis. On the one hand, children seem to get older younger (the KGOY phenomenon). On the other hand, they defer all sorts of responsibilities traditionally associated with adulthood, such as having a partner and children, until later in life: kids getting older later (KGOL). An important question is thus whether young people have essentially changed compared to those from previous generations. Many publications about the Net Generation, Digital Natives, Generation Me, or the Millennials would assert that children are different now—but is this really true?
The idea in these publications is usually that the youngest generation differs in a fundamental way from previous generations, because its members have been steeped in technology their entire lives, have grown up in an individualistic and materialistic society, or have had a democratic or permissive upbringing. As a result, either they are blessed with talents that older people, as digital immigrants, have difficulty comprehending, or they experience serious problems, for example, because they have not learned to deal with setbacks as well as previous generations. These publications sometimes carry a desperate cry for change in education or parenting. But what do the data suggest? Are children today really different from those in previous generations?
Especially in the last decade, published studies have compared physical, cognitive, and psychosocial characteristics of children and adolescents from different generations. The answer, as it turns out, it somewhat mixed. For some characteristics, there have been changes over time. For others, however, children remain quite similar. What is particularly striking, however, is that all these physical, cognitive, and psychosocial “changes,” whether or not they have actually taken place, have been discussed, at least partly, within the context of media use.
Physical Changes: Accelerated Puberty
Physically, youth today are different from those in former generations. They are larger, and they reach puberty earlier. Data from northern Europe, for example, show that the average age of puberty for girls went from just under fourteen in 1980 to twelve and a half in 1990. Similarly, U.S. researchers demonstrated that while the average age of the onset of puberty in girls was around fourteen in 1920, it decreased to thirteen in 1950, and by 2000 it was around twelve.27 In 2013, the average onset of puberty was around age eleven for girls, and about one to two years later for boys. That said, research into the onset of puberty is difficult to compare because there is no fixed definition of the onset of puberty. One study defines puberty for girls as beginning with the growth of breasts, while in another it is the first menstrual period. What is clear in any case is that children have entered puberty at an increasingly early age, although its causes are still unknown. Most researchers ascribe it to better nutrition and health, and sometimes to the increase in various chemicals in our diet.
While it is true that today’s youth are physically different from those in previous generations, correlations between media use and these physical differences have not been found. For example, in the 1930s, when movies were the rage among adolescents, concern arose that children would reach puberty earlier because of seeing sex and romance in commercial films. A large-scale research project from 1933, known as the Payne Fund Studies, looked at whether adolescents who went to the movies tended to reach puberty earlier than those who did not. This was found not to be the case.28
Cognitive Changes: Increased Intelligence
Today’s children are more intelligent than children of the same age in previous generations. This increase in intelligence is called the Flynn effect. James Flynn was one of the first researchers to observe that children’s IQ scores had risen steadily since the beginning of the twentieth century. In one of his studies, Flynn compared the scores on intelligence tests from 1952 to 1982 in fourteen countries, including the United States, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. In virtually every one of the countries studied, he observed a significant increase in IQ scores over this period.29 The inc
rease in intelligence turned out to hold true mainly for fluid intelligence, which involves visual, logical, and problem-solving abilities, and less for crystallized intelligence, for which specific knowledge is required (for example, “What is the capital of Argentina?”).30 Although IQ scores have increased for several decades, the rise in fluid intelligence seems to have reached a ceiling in the last few years.31
According to Flynn, these increases could have been caused only by environmental factors. There is no reason to think that our genes changed in such a short time span. Although better nutrition and health are most commonly mentioned as causes, Flynn argues that they can explain only the changes in the first half of the twentieth century. It is unlikely that people’s diets were better in the 1960s than now, says Flynn. Plausible causes for these changes include smaller families and the new parenting style, which may be more stimulating to children. And interestingly, it is often believed that media may play a role in the increase in fluid intelligence. According to Flynn, we have more “leisure, and particularly more leisure devoted to cognitively demanding pursuits.” As a result, “things our predecessors never dreamed of, such as radio, TV, the internet, and computers occupy our leisure,” which may explain this increased intelligence.32 Later in the book, in the chapter on digital games, we discuss evidence that shows how playing video games is related to the fluid intelligence of youth.
Psychosocial Changes: Self-Awareness and Narcissism
Just as the current generation is assumed to be physically and cognitively different from previous generations, it is also said to have more self-esteem, more self-awareness, and a higher degree of narcissism. These three qualities are related to one another. Self-esteem is the degree to which we value ourselves. Self-awareness—or rather, public self-awareness—is our understanding of how others perceive us. People with high self-awareness can predict well how others will respond to them. If self-esteem and self-awareness are both high, they can turn into narcissism. Narcissists have an inflated self-esteem. They are vain, and they overestimate their own talent and achievements. They can also become arrogant and aggressive if they do not get their way.