Assignment on Contemporary Childhood

Running head: CONTEMPORARY CHILDHOOD
Contemporary Childhood
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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CONTEMPORARY CHILDHOOD
Introduction
One of the significant changes in the social environment of 21st century has long been
the saturation of the culture and the daily lives by means of media. The life of modern adults
is surrounded by technology and so is the life of their children. Sadly, the consequences of a
particular element of the electronic mass media have a specifically detrimental impact on the
well-being of children. Influence of media such as news on the psychosocial development of
the young children is profound. Therefore, it is very important for the physicians to discuss
about the exposure of children to media with parents and to provide them with proper
guidance on the age-appropriate usage of all types of media including television, video
games, internet, radio and music. This paper shall elaborate on presenting a critical research
review on the given group literature review by Donahoo (2007), on the topic revolving
around contemporary childhood. The chosen topic for this purpose is the impact of media on
the development and learning of children, young children and adults.
Discussion
Television plays an important role in the everyday lives of children. Near about all the
Australian families have at least one television set and majority of them own at least three.
Also, according to (), about two-thirds of children belonging from the age range of six and
under watch television every day for about two hours on an average. However, it is to
mention that the impact of television does not end when the favourite show of the child is
over. Even when children are involves in other activities like playing alone or spending time
with his parents, there is possibly to be a television on nearby. A large range of researches
including that of Donahoo (2007) shows that television can have negative impact on the
behaviour, health and achievement of the children. The main purpose of the study by him was
to outline how media have started to promote itself during a child’s prime-time viewing hour

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CONTEMPORARY CHILDHOOD
with dramatic announcements and head pop-ups to announce that they will soon tell viewers
more about accidents, murders and wars and how this issue has affected children and young
people as well as adults. The key questions that have been identified in this article is- how
television triggers violent behaviours among children?
Other researchers like Herodotou (2018) have found that what children are watching
is equally important to as how much they are watching. The main purpose of the article
provided by him is to assess the impacts of touch screen devices on the learning and
development of young children. The key question of article is how media impacts the
learning and development of young children. He has also found that the usage of media
negatively influence the growth and development of young children and can affect the way
these children process information. As per the study, two-thirds of all the television
programming contains violence. This results in children becoming more aggressive, fearful
and insensitive to the sufferings of other people. Hence, it reveals that violence facilitates and
triggers violent activities and behaviours in the children.
Similarly, study by Gelman et al. (2018) too has revealed that new technology does
pose new moral issues for the children. The moral judgment of the digital tracking at different
age level has significant implications for the way concepts of digital privacy develop and for
the digital security of children. The article surrounds around the key question- How media is
posing new moral issues for children? The moral judgment of the digital tracking at different
age level has significant implications for the way concepts of digital privacy develop and for
the digital security of children. Children often face relationship and social skills issues with
excessive usage of media technology. With the same, excessive television watching could be
harmful for the health of children. The more they watch television, the less physical they are.
The modern children spend majority of their time with their gadgets, watching television and
this is why, they do very small to no exercise. This is extremely bad for their mental and