REMOTE CONTROL CHILDHOOD
LESSONS FROM THE USA ABOUT UNDERSTANDING AND RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY
by Diane Levin

Children in the US (and increasingly in other countries) are growing up in an environment saturated with media and media culture. The media culture can offer positive learning opportunities for children. But teachers and parents increasingly are seeing a troubling downside of today's media culture: the heavy doses of violence, stereotypes, commercialism including toys and media-linked products connected to all aspects of children's lives.

The media culture, especially the violence that is being marketed to children through the media, is affecting how and what they play, how they want to look, how they learn in school, how they interact with parents and each other.

As huge profits are begin raked in by the entertainment industry, children, parents and the wider society are paying a heavy price.

Much of what commercial media bring to children undermines the lessons caring adults try to teach.

It contributes to many of the social and educational problems we see in children growing up today: for instance, increased levels of violence, alienation, boredom.

Teachers and parents everywhere are experiencing the effects of the media culture on children, and are asking for guidance in figuring out how to combat the problems they see.

Often, parents are told that it is their job to protect their children from the hazards of media culture.
But, parents can't do this job alone.

From the earliest ages it is hard for parents to take their children out of the house without encountering media images on products designed for children bombarding them everywhere.

Putting the full responsibility on parents is a cop out. Society has a responsibility to create an environment that helps parents in their job of raising healthy children, not placing obstacles at every turn.

Since the tragedy in Littleton, Colorado, a great deal of attention has been placed on the role of media violence in rising levels of youth violence in the US. Have any lessons been learned about what should be done?

There is much that can be done to counteract the hazards of media culture.

But it will require complex and multifaceted approaches at all levels of society by all those, including the home, school, government, and entertainment industry, who care about the well-being of children and ultimately society.

For further reading on marketing violent toys, see Stop Marketing Violence to Tots

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diane Levin is author of Remote Control Childhood: Combating the Hazards of Media Culture (US: New Society Publishers for National Association for the Education of Young Children, Washington, DC 1998). She is a professor of education at Wheelock College, Boston, Massachusetts, where she teaches early childhood courses on violence and play and helped develop a graduate specialty in media literacy. In addition to having taught in regular and special needs early childhood classrooms, she has worked for more than 25 years in teacher education and many kinds of early childhood settings.

Since 1982, the year her son Eli was born, Diane has looked at how media. toys, and popular culture influence children's development and contribute to socialization within a culture of violence. As she has struggled as a parent to counteract the hazards of media violence, and electronic culture, her efforts have increasingly focused on helping other parents and teachers do this as well.

Diane also is the author of Teaching Young Children in Violent Times: Building a Peacable Classroom (Educators for Social Responsibility, Cambridge, MA 1 800 370 2515, and co-author of four books with Nancy Carlsson-Paige, including: Before Push Comes to Shove: Building Conflict-Resolution Skills with Young Children Redleaf Press, St. Paul, MN 1 800 423 8309 Best Day of the Week (children's book by Nancy Carlsson-Paige) Redleaf Press, St. Paul, MN 1 800 423 8309 Who's Calling the Shots? How to Respond Effectively to Children's Fascination with War Play, War Toys and Violent TV New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada 1 800 283 3572

STOP MARKETING VIOLENCE TO TOTS
by NANCY CARLSSON-PAIGE and DIANE E. LEVIN

Since the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the haunting question has resurfaced: What leads children to turn guns on their schoolmates and teachers? In the search for answers, movies, TV, video games and the Internet are receiving long overdue attention as contributors to violence among youth.

But why aren't we talking more about the violence that is marketed to young children through toys and products linked to TV programs, movies and video games? This is how many children are first drawn into a culture of violence.

Research tells us that the roots of violent behavior are established when children are very young. For instance, the American Psychological Association has concluded that patterns of aggressive behavior at age eight are highly predictive of aggressive behavior in adulthood. And we know from research that media violence contributes to aggression and violence in young children.

Both the quantity and quality of violence marketed to young children have continued to escalate since American children's TV was deregulated in 1984 and it became legal to market toys to children through media. First it was done through TV shows like GI Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers.

Now, movies have become the preferred vehicle for marketing violent toys and products to young children. Many of the movies are rated (US) PG-13 or even R, but their toys are marketed for children ages four and up; to name but a few: Godzilla, Small Soldiers, Spawn, Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers.

Often toys linked to these movies are also linked to other media such as TV, video games and comic books. This cross-feeding starts with toys for the youngest children and begins the cycle of children's involvement with entertainment violence.
Witness a recent visit to the toy store. Prominently displayed are The Mummy toys linked to the new PG-13 rated movie of the same name.

The Impaled Mummy action figure has a skull head and visible, blood-covered internal organs. As directed on the box, you play with this toy figure by putting a spear through his back and watching his internal organs spill from his chest. For children who don't yet read, this is shown graphically through pictures.

Toys such as these are not uncommon on toy store shelves.

Small Soldiers toys such as Freakenstein, who is made of body parts found on the battlefield, and Chip Hazard with his blown apart legs, which are marketed to children ages four and up, sit on toys shelves next to Godzilla toys, World Wrestling Federation toys and a host of other violent toys. These toys are highly profitable for the movie industry.

Small Soldiers toys, for example, were the third best-selling new toy introduced in 1998.

These violent and grotesque toys can be especially harmful to young children because they can't make sense of them as adults can.

They cannot put them in context. Children accept at face value what these toys seem to be saying: Violence is fun, violence is exciting, violence doesn't hurt. You can use violence to solve problems with others. Children learn well from these toys and imitate them in their play.

Play is a central vehicle for learning in the early years. Highly realistic, media-linked violent toys channel children's play into narrower, more violent scripts. Such play begins to desensitize children to violence from an early age and primes their appetites for the violent video games, movies and other media, which come along as they get a little older.

That society is beginning to look more seriously at the problem of media violence marketed to youth, and that government is beginning to take more of a leadership role in this, is cause for some hope. But trying to attack the problem without looking more closely at its roots is not likely to bring about meaningful change. Genuine efforts to ameliorate youth violence must uncover the irresponsible marketing practices towards young children that yield high profits for the entertainment industry but could cause serious harm for the rest of us.

Nancy Carlsson-Paige is professor of education at Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Diane E. Levin is professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts. They are co-authors of Before Push Comes to Shove (Redleaf Press, 1998).