Parents of today face many challenges presented by media. Reflect on the media challenges when you were a child and those of today. How are they different?

Question

How are they the same? What are some effects on the child of exposure to the media today?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers to this question will vary greatly depending on the age of the student. For
older students, the differences between their childhood and today may be large, e.g.,
personal access to the Internet, text messaging, video games, programming aimed
to a shorter attention span, etc. (This may not all be covered in the text, but the astute student will pick up on some of these anyway.) Many younger students are
simply seeing expansion of existing media. Research indicates that exposure to
violent TV or video games does correlate with increased aggression in children.
There is also more educational programming available on both the Internet and on
TV. It is important for parents to monitor not only the amount of television watching
and video gaming in which their children engage, but also the content of the media
that they use. Educational programming may be a useful tool for children's learning,
but it should not be used as a replacement for parental-child interaction.