CCTV-organized the Asia-Pacific Children's TV Festival
Television Media and Child Development: Dream and Reality Some of you may be surprised to learn that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is an active supporter of this Asia-Pacific Children and Youth TV Festival. We have indeed long been interested in television as a medium with so much potential to provide children and their families with the information—and also the inspiration—with which they can better their lives. But has this potential been realized? Are our children indeed watching that high-quality programming which can help their development and make a positive difference to their lives? And do we as parents even know what they ARE watching? A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study of media in the lives of 8-18 year olds in the US concluded children were spending an average of nearly six and a half hours a day with the media, or about one quarter of their total waking lives and about twice the time spent in school. Around half reported that their use of the media was neither supervised nor regulated by their parents. The American Academy of Paediatrics meanwhile recommends the limiting of a child's viewing to one or two hours with parents, suggesting that parents discuss the programs and relate them to their own lives. Given this massive and often unsupervised media consumption by young people, questions are everywhere asked about issues such as its impact on the nature of childhood, and on how children interrelate with parents and peers. Then there are the health issues, ranging from the impact of viewing sex and violence to the TV marketing of junk food and the links to childhood obesity. Other issues regard cognitive development and whether the media can offer educational content in an appealing and effective format, resisting the commercial pressures on broadcasting time from other genres, which generate both higher audiences and thereby revenues. There are also the fears that television may be taking valuable time away from reading or homework, possibly even stifling the creativity of young people. A debate is raging whether the medium empowers or rather disenfranchises them, encouraging them to copy unhealthy life-styles modeled on TV or rather inspiring them with positive role models.
The fact that the 2005 media study of 8-18 year olds had previously been conducted in 1999, allowed comparisons to be made. Interestingly, although the amount of time young people gave to the media had stayed virtually the same, up from 6.19 hours to 6.21 hours, they had increased the time spent using more than one media at a time, with the total amount of media content consumed rising by about one hour from 7.29 to 8.33 hours. Thus, as new media technologies come into being, young people do not give up on the old media and do not or cannot increase the number of hours they have available. This means that they increasingly become media-multitaskers, instant messaging while doing homework and watching TV. But do children erode or further develop their powers of concentration in such situations and how do these gains or losses affect, for example, the quality of their homework or of their reading… or of their grades? A UNICEF-commissioned study produced for the 4th World Summit on Media for Children and Adolescents saw the world media landscape for children and youth consisting essentially of OPPORTUNITIES and RISKS. The globalization of media brings opportunities to broaden children's outlooks and provide more equal access to information but it also threatens cultural identification and values. Technological advances in the same way bring the promise of new skills and greater youth participation in society but also increase the risk of child exploitation and informational divides. The Internet has proved a two-edged sword in this regard, breaking down the spaces which physically divide us but also thereby stimulating both the supply and demand sides of child exploitation. From a UNICEF perspective, these developments are crucially important because of how they connect with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Article 17 emphasizes that “States Parties recognize the important function performed by the mass media and shall ensure that the child has access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health”. Article 13 of the same Convention enshrines the right to freedom of expression, with this right including “the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice…”. Article 17, together with Articles 12 and 13, should contribute not only to the development of well-informed citizens, but to young people’s voices being heard more and more through the mass media. It sends a clear message that children should be both participants and beneficiaries of the information revolution”. But how has the mass media in reality been doing, how have the media been influencing children and young people? While there may be a lot of debate in this area, the Report notes that sociologists and researchers in different regions have observed various adverse effects, from the decreasing role of traditional sources of influence such as family, school, community and religion to the creation of harmful or unrealistic stereotypes, appeal of individualism and personal, as opposed to collective or societal, achievement, emphasis on the banal and trivial; de-emphasis on education, creativity and culture, tendency for young people to think less for themselves and to follow media-set agendas, and the promotion of intolerance and apathy.
Children and youth advocates lament these negative effects precisely because they are aware of the enormous potentially positive influences media can have on young audiences. These include broadening their world outlook and breaking down stereotypes, increasing their access to ideas and promoting critical thinking and participation in social and political life. But is cultural globalization really that simple? Is broadcasting breaking down or rather REINFORCING existing stereotypes? One question perhaps to be asked is what organizations such as UNICEF would consider as constituting quality media for young people. The UNICEF Report for the 4th World Summit suggested all would agree that key ingredients were “being credible, comprehensible and uplifting, and empowering youth to think for themselves”, while concluding it was often easier to say what quality broadcasting was NOT. That is to say, “dull, boring, patronizing, overly commercial or violent, vulgar, disrespectful, biased, manipulative or corruptive” Certainly, no such criticisms could be made of our more than ten years of cooperation with CCTV's Youth and Children's Department. Beginning with innovative programmes in connection with the International Children's Day of Broadcasting (ICDB), CCTV has gone on to train children in TV production through their Galaxy Training Institute and also established hundreds of Digital Video (DV) clubs throughout China. The programme produced for the 2004 ICDB on the prevention of child injury involved children taking out their digital videos into the areas surrounding their homes and schools and recording the dangers as they saw them. This was an excellent example of quality and engaging children's television, which has since been nominated for several international children's awards. But fortunately there are also positive aspects to media for children and youth having become a major global issue. The UNICEF Report concludes: “A broad range of governmental and non-governmental initiatives and activities speak to the growing commitment to realize children's rights through the media. Numerous meetings, conferences and summits have taken place on the subject. Excellent guidelines have been written on how to report on children's issues as well as how to ensure effective youth participation in the media. Many important studies have been done exploring young people's media habits and the effects of media on youth attitudes and behaviors. Broadcasters and advertisers have adopted voluntary codes to ensure inappropriate material isn't aired during hours when young people watch or listen. Legislation has been passed requiring television and radio stations to devote a percentage of airtime to quality children’s programming. Numerous media consumer and watchdog groups hold the media to account when they do not live up to minimum standards and their social responsibilities towards the public, including children…” These are important reasons to thank our hosts, CCTV, for organizing this TV Forum and thereby providing us all the opportunity to reflect upon recent trends in children's broadcasting. Through this process, I feel confident we can work together to establish and maintain standards for children’s broadcasting and thereby realize that potential the medium has always had to inform and inspire our children. For that is also how we can help create what UNICEF refers to as “A World Fit For Children”. It's up to all of us! Thank you.
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