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Mass Media and Young Children's Development

Over the past fifty years, movies, radio, comic books, and finally television have become an integral part of American children's lives. As the time devoted by young children to the mass media has increased, the effects of the media on their socialization and development have probably also become greater. Yet, on the whole, these media effects, whether positive or negative, are unplanned and incidental to other goals. The media are usually designed to entertain and to induce the desire to buy, not to teach young children. Longstanding social concern about the negative socializing effects of the media is reflected in an extensive literature on aggression, morality, and anxiety. Recently, public and professional attention has focused on the few television programs designed to contribute positively to the development of cognitive and social skills. Simultaneously, empirical literature devoted to observational learning and imitation has burgeoned in the field of child development. In the following discussion, direct studies of the media are integrated with those of imitative learning in order to draw conclusions and implications concerning media effects on "young children," that is, those of preschool and early elementary school age. The review is restricted to studies of publicly distributed media, primarily television and films, which are the subject of most publications.