Aaron Swiney's List: Week 2 Team B Negative effects on literacy

• How much are kids using media?

   
   
  • The total amount of media use by youth ages 8 to 18 averages 6-plus hours a day—more than any other activity.
   
  • The amount of use has increased significantly, up from 4-plus hours in the last five years.
   
  • Eighty percent of adolescents possess at least one form of media access.
   
  • There is extensive multi-tasking associated with media use (instant messaging while doing homework and listening to music on an mp3 player, for example).
   
  • Of particular concern is the amount of TV kids consume. From 2004 to 2009, television and video use averaged three to five hours per day, peaking between the ages of 11 and 14, a crucial period for kids' social development.
   
  • Fifty-four percent of teens send text messages, and one third of teens send more than 100 text messages per day.
   
  • One third talk face-to-face with friends, around the same percentage that talk on cell phones (38 percent) and land lines (30 percent).
   
  • Twenty-four percent communicate with friends via instant messages.
   
  • Twenty-five percent contact friends via social networking sites.
   
  • Eleven percent use e-mail.
   
   

  How does media use affect kids' development?

   

  Because texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites like Facebook are still comparatively new, research is not really available yet on their long-term effects. But we can extrapolate a certain amount from research on the effects of TV and video games on children's development.

   
   
  • Among preschoolers, more time spent watching TV has been shown to have a negative impact on attention, academic performance, and adjustment in elementary school and middle school.
   
  • Increases in media use are associated with reduced grades; only 23 percent of "light" users averaged C's or worse, as compared with 47 percent of "heavy" users.
   
  • Kids who see more TV learn to read later and slower.
   
   

  Violent and sexual content, in both TV and video games, bring their own concerns. Increased exposure to violence has been proven to result in:

   
   
  • More aggressive behavior
   
  • More aggressive thoughts
   
  • More angry feelings
   
  • Less empathy
   
  • Fewer helping behaviors
   
  • Increases in fear
   
   

  Furthermore, this content tends to be:

   
   
  • Unrealistic: in 73 percent of instances there is no punishment, and only 16 percent of programs show any negative consequences to violent behavior.
   
  • Frequent in children's programming. Even when kids are watching "family friendly" shows like "Sponge Bob," there is an average 25 acts of violence per TV-viewing session.
   
   

  Sexualized content, which appears frequently in certain video games and often includes sexualized violence, is associated with:

   
   
  • Poor attitudes towards women
   
  • An increase in rape myth acceptance–"They asked for it."
   
  • Increases in violence against women
   
   

  In terms of how this information might extend to the use of other social media:

   
   
  • Participation for long periods of time can have a negative effect on basic cognitive processes.
   
  • Overuse can have a negative impact on attention skills.
   
  • The content of the information can have an effect on emotions and behavior.
   
   

  Furthermore, the actions that are discussed, encouraged, and practiced in interactive media are likely to become stronger and more frequent. If kids practice violent interactions, they are likely to get better at them; the U.S. Armed Forces uses video games as part of training for combat.

• Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said.
• "By using more visual media, students will process information better," she said. "However, most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination — those do not get developed by real-time media such as television or video games. Technology is not a panacea in education, because of the skills that are being lost.
• "Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary," Greenfield said. "Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades."

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