Week 1 Discussion

The policy statement “Children, Adolescents, and Media” proposed by the Council on Communications and Media states that “young people now spend more time with media than they do in school,” and focuses on recommendations for pediatricians, parents, and schools to curb media’s negative side effects. This caused me to wonder about the distribution of young people spending said amount of time on media – how drastically does this estimate vary by a family’s socioeconomic status? Should all forms of media be grouped together like this?

The policy proposal also highlights a lot of negative effects that it believes should be mitigated, but from Alper’s perspective, technology does not necessarily equate to electronic media and there are benefits to bringing “NMLs and early childhood education literature into the same conversation.” Instead of curbing the amount of time spent on media, how can parents and schools encourage youth to make the most of interactions with media to increase learning?