Media effects are vast and potent

When children arrive for their first day of kindergarten in local schools, they typically have already logged nearly as many hours watching TV as they will spend in all their elementary classrooms combined.

If you add to this staggering statistic the amount of time our young people spend listening to radio and CDs, watching movies and DVDs, reading newspapers and magazines, you begin to understand the impact that the mass media play in the educational process — whether or not that is their intention.

The media have our children’s attention for more time than we do, as educators and as parents.

What does this mean? Social scientists still don’t completely agree on what impact the media have on individuals or on our society. Certainly the media have changed the ways we all spend our free time. Also, evidence shows that while the media don’t tell us what to think, they tell us what to think ABOUT. They set the agenda for discussion and thought.

The media can also be a potent tool in education. In fact, the founding fathers of television envisioned a medium that would bring culture to the masses — theatre, opera, concerts. That vision got clouded when it became clear that fortunes could be made by bringing to the masses the type of entertainment they already enjoyed. Advertisers wanted to air their wares on programs that reached the most people, and those were the programs that pandered to the widest possible tastes.

It’s important that we understand the functionings of the media so that we can all become more critical viewers — and can teach our youngsters critical viewing skills as well.

Many years ago my office conducted a survey of media consumption among 50,000 public school students in Santa Barbara County. At that time, we found what we called the “wired bedroom” — youngsters’ bedrooms filled with televisions, VCRs, radios, stereos, and telephones in striking numbers. If anything, these figures have probably moved in the direction of more wiring.

The survey also found good news about reading, with high levels of book, newspaper, and magazine reading reported by young people, even when not assigned for school.

The survey gave us some insights into the media habits of our young people, and it enabled us to chart a course for monitoring those habits and teaching critical viewing skills. It seems there is no substitute for parental involvement in the process. This means taking control of how much viewing occurs, when it occurs, and what is actually viewed.

Television and all the mass media can be powerful instruments, firing the imagination of young people, teaching them about their culture and their heritage. The important point is that we must all serve as gatekeepers, making sure our children have access to quality material and cutting down on the types of messages that seem inappropriate, upsetting, or false.

As Edward R. Murrow said of television long ago, “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely lights and wires in a box.”