Study Shows Television is Not Bad For Kids
Ok teachers and parents, here's another study that shows early exposure of television to kids is not detrimental to their test scores.
NY Times reports the study analyzed test scores of kids in low income and middle-income families, instead of analyzing kids who watch versus kids who do not watch. Researchers were able to use the data from 1940's and early 1950's when concomittantly the Civil rights Act had the Coleman Report gather test scores from 300,000 kids across the country and television was just being introduced to specific cities. Therefore they correlated data from exposed versus non-exposed to TV preschoolers to the nation wide-test scores from different income levels. The results showed “very little difference and if anything, a slight positive advantage” in test scores for children who grew up watching TV early on, compared to those who did not, said Mr. Shapiro.
Much of my work with youth and media is not based on trying to prove television and technology exposure is positive. More so, my work is informed by researchers like Ellen Seiter, Henry Jenkins and David Buckingham, who show that youth are always actively deconstructing the various medias in their lives - but as educators we need to teach them how to actively deconstruct these medias and tell their own stories, so that they are not accepting all the stories they see on television as truth. This is especially true for sectors of the population who are not represented equally on television or who do not have access to traditional technology. That's why I chose to work with marginalized and low-income communities because it's important to teach them critical thinking tools so that they can re-mix their ideas, reflect on their own lives, and ultimately re-contexualize stories for themselves and their own communties.
When I was in China teaching media, teaching critical thinking skills was shocking to all the youth I worked with, regardless of ethnic or economic backgrounds, because their pedagogy does not encourage youth to be creative or critically think about media. Therefore, I encountered new challenges in even getting them to a place where they could start actively thinking about their media. Comparing them to US students, they are overwhelmingly more technology savvy and academically skilled and studious, however to get them to actually speak up or work in groups was the biggest struggle. My point is that even when youth are great test takes and are technically savvy, they still need to learn how to deconstruct the media technology in their lives. So studies with youth and television that take into consideration how they process the media is just as important to analyze.