Tag: children

Posted in digital parenting, family conversations, parent child conversations, parents and technology, social networking

Mrs. Obama Said No Facebook???

Posted on by Marti Weston

Preteens are savvy media consumers, and among the kids I know there is significant buzz about Michelle Obama’s views on Facebook. “Pre-teenagerdom” is such a difficult and challenging time for parents and for the kids themselves. Many children want to hurry up and become teens and joining into social networking activities is one way to make them feel older and even wiser. Feeling and sometimes believing that your parents simply don’t understand technology is another way. So it’s a bit of a blow when the First Lady and First Mom — a person many of them admire — tells their parents to slow things down.

A Few Other Reports

Posted in answers to media questions, digital parenting, media literacy, parents and technology, television

How Much TV? Again

Posted on by Marti Weston
Visit this site for list of questions that parents can use to help children evaluate television advertisements.

Right now, around Superbowl weekend, lots of people write and debate about how much television is okay for young children to watch, and many parents wring their hands about manipulative advertising. This brings back memories.

I don’t talk about this often, but 29 years ago when our television broke, we had a new baby and not enough money, so we decided to put off the purchase of a new TV. The delay went on for six years until our daughter was seven years old. Originally we did not make a decision out of any deep philosophical principles — and back then there was a lot less research about the effect of TV-watching on young children — we simply did not have money that we wanted to spend on a new set just then (or we had other things we wanted to purchase , I really don’t remember). However, gradually we forgot our plans to purchase a new television because we liked what happened in our family.

Continue reading “How Much TV? Again” →

Posted in parents and technology, technology and health problems, technology in bedrooms

TV in Your Child’s Bedroom? Research to Consider

Posted on by Marti Weston

Are you tempted to allow a television in your child’s bedroom?

Recently the journal Preventive Medicine published research that explores the potential impacts of placing a television in a child’s bedroom. By evaluating existing health survey data researchers sought to discover whether certain behavioral and social characteristics were especially associated  with the presence of a television in a child’s bedroom (bedroom television or BTV). The article, TV’s in the Bedrooms of Children: Does it Impact Health and Behavior? (abstract), is not freely available on the web, but it can be purchased or read at a medical library.

To understand more about how BTV use might affect a child’s behavior the researchers used data from the 2007 U.S. National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), which gathered information through interviews of 46,687 family with children ages 6-17. As a part of the NSCH, parents were asked to estimate the amount of time their child spends watching television on an average weekday.  Continue reading “TV in Your Child’s Bedroom? Research to Consider” →

Posted in answers to media questions, digital parenting, image evaluation, media literacy, parent education, parents and technology

7 Advertising Strategies For Your Child to Know

Posted on by Marti Weston

In today’s world an advertisement focuses on a specific demographic and gender — kids, boys, girls, adolescents, tweens, young adults, seniors, and more.  This post, How Advertisers Target Kids,  at the Media Awareness Network, a Canadian organization, provides much more background information.   This PBS site, Don’t Buy It, Get Media Smart, explains how companies make advertisements, and then goes on to help children deconstruct (take apart and examine) them, and the images on this site are excellent.

Advertisers seek to combine images and music or sound with at least one or more strategies below, aiming to attract people, connect them to a product, and then encourage a purchase.

Advertising Strategies that are Used to Target Children Continue reading “7 Advertising Strategies For Your Child to Know” →