Concerns about the effects of television on children are a recurrent theme of public debate. Yet it is an area in which children's voices are rarely heard. Too often parental and governmental anxiety has focused on the impact screen violence may have on young viewer's behavior with little attention paid to children's own emotional responses to the moving image.
David Buckingham, a lecturer in media studies at the University of London's Institute of Education, believes a more useful approach to understanding the role of television in children's lives is to ask children about their own responses to horror films, "weepies", soap operas and news bulletins and to discuss with them how they make sense of what they see. Mr. Buckingham, a father of two boys aged five and nine, also believes it is important to understand how parents help or hinder their children's understanding of television.
In an attempt to throw new light on the issue, Mr. Buckingham interviewed 72 children aged six to 15 about their television viewing. The result is a refreshing book, Moving Images: Understanding Children's Emotional Responses to Television, which is recommended reading for all media policymakers. The children displayed a sophisticated understanding of many of the conventions of television. Even the very youngest subjects knew that families in The Cosby Show or Roseanne are not "real" and were bale to recognize that programs obeyed certain rules whereby things are played for laughs or conflicts are easily resolved. Yet their interpretation of how realistic such programs are also depended on how they compared with their own family lives.
"A key factor to emerge was the way they reacted differently to fact and fiction," Mr. Buckingham says. So much of the debate about television, particularly about the possible imitative effects of screen violence, focuses on fiction, such as horror films and thrillers. Mr. Buckingham discovered, however, that news and documentaries often produced more profound reactions.
As part of the study he interviewed children who had seen Child's Play 3, the "video nasty" which some newspapers speculated may have influenced the child killers of James Bugler in 1993.
Many of the children who had watched the 18-rated film appeared to be seasoned horror film viewers who found it "scary" in parts but also enjoyable. Much of their pleasure appeared to come from its joking attitude to death.
The children's reaction to the media coverage of the Bugler case was quite different. Many said the press and television reports of the case had upset them a great deal; a number said they had cried or had been unable to sleep. In contrast to their view of Child's Play, the children repeatedly related the events to their own experience. Many argued, nevertheless, that it was important for the Bugler coverage to be shown, not least as a warning.
Mr. Buckingham believes these responses raise important issues that media commentators have virtually ignored. If there are questions to be asked about screen violence, perhaps the starting point should be to what extent does news coverage enable children to understand what they are seeing. "Often we see decontextualised images of suffering in the news and it is questionable how far children can understand what they are seeing," he says.
One way of helping children to interpret what they see on television would be to integrate it into their education. "Media studies could be part of English lessons. English is the subject in schools that is most concerned with culture, but to narrow culture down to books is unrealistic. To pretend that television is not part of our culture is not to equip kids to deal with the modem world," he says.
Parents also need education, he adds. Schools encourage parents to help their children to read at home, Mr. Buckingham says, and they should take similar steps to get parents to take part in their children's television viewing.
"It is accepted that parents will sit down and read books with their children, not just to help them to read, but to talk to them about the stories and about life in general. Similar things could be achieved with television, if only it was given the same status. "
"There is a lot of cultural snobbery about television. Too often it is treated as a reward, a way of keeping kids quiet or as a focus of family battles over what programs children should be allowed to watch," Mr. Buckingham says.
A more positive approach to television, might pay off. "The therapeutic and cathartic experiences of television gained through the vicarious experiences of watching somebody else's life, for example, might be more effective if children didn't just watch it but also talk about it with their parents," he says.
Regulatory or censorship bodies, such as the Broadcasting Standards Council and the British Board of Film Classification, could take a lead by producing source material.
The explosion of multi-channel television of new information technology such as video-on-demand and the Internet, will render the current system of censorship through broadcasting regulation and film and video classification totally unworkable.
Eventually there will simply be too much material hitting our screens for the regulators to monitor effectively.
Improving parents' and children's ability to interpret what they see and to cope with their own emotions about it, will help to empower them to make informed decisions about television on their own behalf. Ultimately, it could be our best hope of enjoying, and retaining some control over, the multi-channel future.