The Media's Negative Effects On Children

Children’s media has led to measurable declines in children’s health in a variety of ways. When children spend the majority of their lives sitting on the couch watching television, playing video games, or using their phone, that is less time they are spending exercising. Today, children would much rather watch a screen and use a controller to make an animated person run around than actually run around themselves. Junk food is also portrayed in the media constantly, so those are the foods that children are going to want to eat whether it’s subconsciously or because they want to eat what their favorite character on a television show eats. These problems can be corrected by using video games that require people to get up and move to use them …show more content…
Children are no longer creating their own storylines when playing; children are simply just imitating what they see on television and in their video games (Van Hoorn, Nourot, Scales, & Alward, 2014). This is excellent for the advertising companies because, as explained in “Consuming Kids”, companies are making a large profit on items such as costumes for children to use when they play. These costumes enable children to be exactly like their favorite character and to better act like them. This eliminates the need to be creative and find other objects that can be substituted for other objects to be used while playing. Another topic that was prevalent in both “Consuming Kids” as well as “Play at the Center of the Curriculum” is stereotyping in media and the negative affects it has on children. Many toys are targeted specifically for males and for females such as Barbie dolls, baby dolls, action figures, and monster truck toys. This stereotype can negatively impact the way that children develop their sense of identity and culture. Children will grow up to escalate these ideas that people who play with “opposite gender” toys are weird, and that it is frowned upon to do so just because of advertising (Van Hoorn et al., 2014). Another stereotype that is depicted in “Consuming Kids” are the unattainable standards men and women need to live up to such as having a “perfect” body or acting a specific way. In a world without commercializing childhood, I believe that society would be a much more open-minded and creative place to grow up and live