While it seems clear that exposure to sexual media content can influence sexual behavior, it is less clear whether it influences sexual risk behavior. For example, some studies find no effect on teen pregnancy and the rates of STIs, but others do find such effects.48 Most of these studies, however, were conducted in the United States, and thus are difficult to generalize to the rest of the world. The United States is more conservative about sex education than other developed countries, and it is at the top of the list of developed countries for teen pregnancy rates.49 For example, a Swiss study found no effect of sex in the media on teen pregnancies.50 Similarly, a Dutch study found no effect of exposure to online porn on teens’ condom use or their participation in casual sexual encounters.51 Yet an American study found that sexting (sending and sharing sexual photos online) was associated with risky sexual behaviors, namely, having concurrent sexual partners and more past-year sexual partners.52 While more work is needed to obtain a clearer picture of the relationship between sexual media and risky sexual behavior, these findings suggest that cultural values influence how youth process and are influenced by sexual media messages.
Conclusion
Adolescents are growing up in an environment replete with sexual messages. In movies, games, advertisements, or Google searches, teens are frequently confronted with sexual media content. Unfortunately, much of this media content presents a view that is unrealistic and stereotypical—often treating women as mere sex objects and men as sex seekers. Over time, these distorted messages can influence teens’ sexual cognition, emotions, and, in some cases, sexual risk behavior.
It should be emphasized that the longitudinal relationships between sexual media content and sexual cognition, emotions, and behavior are often reciprocal. For example, adolescents who begin having sex earlier seek out sex in the media at an earlier age. Both behaviors, after all, are expressions of the same phase in their sexual development: seeking sexual media content gives these interested adolescents new ideas and contributes to their sexual experiences at an earlier age.
We also see that not all adolescents are equally susceptible to the effects of sexual media content. Boys and girls do not seem to differ appreciably in their susceptibility to the effects of sexual media content, but other factors do seem to increase susceptibility. Some effects of sexual media content seem to hold particularly for adolescents in early puberty. Other effects, especially cognitive ones, seem to hold more for teens who believe that the media’s representation of sex is realistic and who are less sexually experienced. More research is needed to better identify which youth are especially susceptible to the potentially negative effects of sexual media content, and how media education may serve as a protective factor for these susceptible youth.53
Finally, while continued efforts to understand the negative consequences of sexual media content exposure are crucial, it is also important to realize that sexual media content can serve as a positive role model for children and teens today. Thus far, the studies on positive effects are promising—showing, for example, delay of sexual initiation, improvement in condom self-efficacy, increased knowledge of sexual risks, and even removal of sexual references from social media profiles.54 In the future, we hope to see more work designed to evaluate how media can support the development of healthy sexual knowledge, sexual self-confidence, and tolerance of sexual diversity.
In an era when sexual media is omnipresent, when teens are becoming “senders” of sexual media content (for example, via sexy selfies; also see chapter 13), and when sexual content is available at the touch of a button, it is imperative for scholars to continue to ask questions about who is affected by this content, why this influence occurs, and whether and when such effects may be troublesome. As with media violence, this issue is not a black-and-white debate about whether a particular type of media content has effects on teens. It is time to move way from a public debate characterized by a competition between parties with traditional or liberal ideas about human behavior, and move toward a more balanced approach that addresses the crucial questions discussed in this chapter.
11
MEDIA AND EDUCATION
“Hold your tongue!” added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on:
“We had the best of educations—in fact, we went to school every day—”
“I’ve been to a day-school, too,” said Alice; “you needn’t be so proud as all that.”
“With extras?” asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.
“Yes,” said Alice, “we learned French and music.”
“And washing?” said the Mock Turtle.
“Certainly not!” said Alice indignantly.
“Ah! Then yours wasn’t a really good school,” said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Thus far, we have highlighted the darker side of media use, such as the effects of media violence on aggression or the effect of sexual media content on sexual behavior. In this chapter, we turn to its sunny side, focusing on the positive effects of educational media—media designed to support youth’s development. Today, there are more platforms for educational media content than ever before. And while researchers have long identified the effectiveness of educational television, the potential for other educational platforms is still being understood. We begin with a short account of the history of educational media, along with statistics on the use of educational media in the family. We then discuss several effects of educational media content. For example, does educational content stimulate academic skills, such as literacy and numeracy? Can it facilitate social-emotional learning by promoting characteristics such as empathy, willingness to share, and self-regulation? And can it help children be more imaginative and creative? The chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions for the field of educational media.
Where It All Began
Educational media, particularly educational television, secured its place in history with the arrival of Sesame Street in 1969. At its time revolutionary, Sesame Street was developed to help prepare preschool children (ages 2–5) for elementary school, particularly children from low-income and minority backgrounds. Sesame Street was not the first children’s series to embed education into humor and entertainment. Other series at the time, such as Captain Kangaroo (1955–84), were based on the same formula. What distinguished Sesame Street was its use of empirical research as an integral part of the production process. In its design, Sesame Street relied (and continues to rely) on the input of in-house experts on child development, learning, and media. In doing so, it has become an exemplar of how to incorporate academic insight into educational programming. By being both entertaining and research driven, Sesame Street permanently changed the landscape of educational media.1 Today, the series airs in more than 140 countries, either in its standard version or in culturally adjusted forms.
From its inception, the core aim of Sesame Street has been to foster the school-readiness skills of preschool children. School-readiness skills encompass not only academic learning, such as letter and number recognition, but also social-emotional learning, such as friendliness, cooperation, and acceptance of diversity. Although the founders of Sesame Street included social-emotional learning goals in their initial concept, in the early years they focused primarily on academic learning. They took seriously the opinions of parents and educational experts, and in the early 1970s, these groups identified academic learning as the greatest need among children from low-income and minority backgrounds (the target group of the series).2
In the 1990s, the curriculum of Sesame Street underwent a structural shift in the direction of social-emotional learning. A different view of education was emerging at the time. Evidence began to appear that academic success was a function not only of academic skills, but also of healthy social-emotional development. Studies showed, for example, that children who have difficulty controlling their negative emotions or wh
o cannot get along with their teachers or classmates do poorly in school.3 As a result of these and other similar studies, child psychologists began to acknowledge the importance of both academic and social-emotional skills in predicting school success. Moreover, along with this shift, parents changed their views on social-emotional learning, which they regarded as equal, rather than secondary, to academic learning.
Sesame Street’s approach to formally include academic and social-emotional curricula in its content slowly spread to the educational media genre more generally. Developers and researchers agreed that educational media could be used to stimulate academic and social-emotional learning. This trend toward a more encompassing definition of learning could be seen in educational media legislation at the time. For example, in the United States, the 1996 guidelines of the Children’s Television Act introduced the so-called three-hour rule requiring that public broadcast stations air, at a minimum, three hours a week of children’s educational or informational television. To be considered educational or informational, programs could meet children’s cognitive-intellectual or social-emotional needs.4
Educational Media Use at Home
In the new millennium, educational media have become a fixture in children’s media diets. American children ages 2–10 now spend about an hour a day with educational media, with comparable estimates in other industrialized countries.5 Moreover, ever-younger children now use educational media. Whereas two decades ago, children began to watch television at around two and a half years of age, today’s children start watching at around four months.6 In fact, children under the age of two now use screen media (television, DVDs, tablets) for an average of an hour a day.7
What might explain this acceleration in (educational) media use in early childhood? First there have been increased marketing efforts directed toward the youngest age group. As noted in chapter 1, since the resounding success of Teletubbies in 1997, commercial conglomerates have set their sights on the “diaper demographic.” For example, shortly after Teletubbies, Baby Einstein products (videos, toys, etc.) were introduced to the public and soon became a multimillion-dollar business, which was sold to Disney in 2001. In 2003 came the birth of Baby TV—a twenty-four-hour-seven-day-a-week television channel, which is now available in more than a hundred countries. And most recently, a deluge of infant- and toddler-targeted educational apps have appeared on the market, with Apple’s educational app store, for example, currently featuring more than eighty thousand apps to choose from.
Ramped-up marketing efforts to parents are not the only explanation for the increase of educational media use in early childhood. In many Western countries, policies have also started to put more emphasis on so-called informal learning in early childhood. Informal learning is the kind of learning that occurs spontaneously and playfully outside school. As discussed in chapter 2, today’s parents want the best for their children, including the benefits of educational media in the home. Many parents see educational media as an easy and accessible means of providing their children with experiences that can give them a leg up in life.8 And the more that parents believe in the value of educational media content, the higher the likelihood that their children will have access to this content at home.9
Although educational media are now a common part of early childhood, the use of such media seems to decrease as children grow older. For example, whereas two- to four-year-olds spend slightly more than an hour a day using educational media, eight- to ten-year-olds are estimated to spend only forty-two minutes a day with such content.10 Moreover, the percentage of educational media content in overall media use drops significantly with age: for two- to four-year-olds, it is 78 percent, whereas for eight- to ten-year-olds, it is 27 percent.11
The substantial drop-off in educational media use among older children is not clearly understood. It may reflect the fact that as children enter formal schooling, they have less discretionary time for educational media use because of homework and extracurricular activities. And from that point on, parents may be less likely to promote educational media for older children. Another explanation is that fewer successful educational media options are available for older children. In research on touch-screen technology, this phenomenon has been referred to as the “app gap,” highlighting the challenges that developers face in creating educational media content for an audience that is increasingly critical of such content.
Finally, the downtrend in older children’s educational media use may simply reflect their declining interest in such content. Often referred to as the “spinach syndrome,” this term refers to what happens to children by about five years of age, as they begin to reject anything that is supposed to be good for them (see chapter 5). Children become less interested in “teachy-preachy” content and instead prefer real-life content that addresses social and emotional themes. Older children and teens seem to be mainly interested in prosocial content dealing with social-emotional themes, such as friendships, cooperation, and altruism.12
Learning from Educational Media
Public concerns about the negative effects of media on children are of long standing. Implicit in these concerns is the notion that children and teens can learn from media. And if we subscribe to the notion that media content can teach youth negative lessons, it stands to reason that it can teach positive lessons too. As Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the founders of Sesame Street, famously noted, “It is not whether children learn from television, it is what they learn, because everything children see on television is teaching them something.”13
The goals of educational media vary significantly, but most have attempted to support youth’s academic skills, social-emotional learning, or creativity. Our focus here is on educational media used in the home as tools for informal learning. We do not review the effects of such media in the classroom or in other formal learning situations. Although research on the positive effects of media is not as robust as that on their negative effects, this growing field has thus far compellingly shown that under certain conditions, educational media content can bolster both the academic and social-emotional development of youth.
One of the key aspects of educational media effects involves an understanding of how they occur. How do children and teens learn from television and other media? Several scholars have attempted to explain educational media effects, most notably Albert Bandura (social cognitive theory), Shalom Fisch (the capacity model), and Katherine Buckley and Craig Anderson (the general learning model). Each theory makes predictions about the conditions under which the skills, attitudes, and behaviors portrayed in educational media will be replicated in and transferred to other circumstances.
Social Cognitive Theory
Just as social cognitive theory has been used to explain how violent content may translate to increased aggression among children, it has also been used to explain how children may benefit from educational media content. As discussed in chapter 7, social cognitive theory predicts that children are more likely to learn from a model in the media if they are able to identify with the model or if they perceive the model to be similar to themselves. According to the theory, children are more likely to adopt behavior from a model that is rewarded than from a model that is punished. Moreover, by observing models, children learn not only how to imitate the rewarded behavior but also how to extract abstract behavioral rules that they can adapt in future situations. For this kind of observational learning to occur, attention to the model and its behavior is critical. Attention can be enhanced by specific characteristics of the model (attractiveness, popularity in the group, sense of humor) and predicted by differences between the children (their developmental levels, prior experiences, preferences).14 Social cognitive theory has provided important insight into how media can positively influence children and adolescents.15
The Capacity Model
Shalom Fisch developed his capacity model to explain how children extract and comprehend educational content from narrative educational media. His model proposes that ed
ucational media (particularly television) contain two forms of content: a narrative (story line) and the embedded educational content. Central to the model is the supposition that children’s working memory is limited, and that the cognitive demands of the embedded educational content should not exceed the resources available in working memory.
In the processing of educational media, cognitive demands are said to come from processing the narrative, processing the embedded educational content, and the distance between the two content types. When the educational content and the narrative are tangential to each other, the two parallel comprehension processes compete for children’s limited resources in working memory, which may result in impaired comprehension of the educational content. But when the educational content is integral to the narrative, comprehension of the educational content is expected to improve. Like social cognitive theory, the capacity model predicts that characteristics of the content (for example, program pace, direct questions from a character to the child) and of the child (for example, developmental level) may lead to more efficient processing and increased comprehension.16 And like social cognitive theory, it has been used successfully to predict children’s learning from educational television.17
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