Consuming media, it seems, has far outstripped reading storybooks or playing dress-up as the average American child's favorite pastime. Overall, children between the ages of two and 18 spend an average of almost five-and-a-half hours a day at home watching television, playing video games, surfing the Web or using some other form of media, revealed a 1999 Kaiser Family Foundation report called "Kids & Media @ The New Millennium." Often children multitask, engaging in more than one media-related activity at the same time.
How does all this media use affect children's cognitive, emotional and social development? Researchers are only beginning to search for answers, now that society is taking the question seriously.
Thanks to pressure from APA and researchers themselves, such attitudes are now changing. The NSF recently gave a group of psychologists a $2.45 million, five-year grant to study how interactive media affect children's learning, for example. Other psychologists are tackling the question of how more traditional media such as television affect children. Although there are still many more questions than answers, one thing is becoming clearer as psychologists continue their research: No electronic medium's effects are all good or all bad; it's the content that makes all the difference.
When it comes to television, much of the research so far has focused on the negative impact it has on children's development. Brian L. Wilcox, PhD, chair of APA's Task Force on Advertising and Children and director of the Center on Children, Families and the Law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has summarized the literature about the effects that televised violence, sexuality and advertising have on children.
The news isn't good. Take violence, for example. While not unanimous, says Wilcox, the consensus is that exposure to violent content has generally negative effects on children's attitudes and behaviors.
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