Children’s Media in a Digital Age
Gary E. Knell of Sesame Street looks at the influence of media past, present, and future.
During the 1984 Super Bowl a commercial made an impact on the American perception of personal computers. Apple’s commercial “1984” promoting the, then new, Macintosh computer, played off George Orwell’s classic novel. The spot showed a woman breaking through the ranks of followers of a Big Brother figure presiding over them and proceeds to hurl a hammer at the figure on the screen, setting off an explosion of light onto the followers. A voice over then announced, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.” Nearly a quarter of a century later, competition and a constantly evolving technology market is thriving, thanks in part to the influence of that commercial. The same way that commercial changed the way the public began to look at computers (and set off the popularity of Apple’s products); we are starting to break new ground in developing new technologies for children as the need and demand continues rise.
We know children are naturally attracted to media and are starting to use all types at ages as young as 6 months. Just as in the last fifteen years, the preschool television market became crowded with a plethora of programming choices; the technology market is quickly expanding with cell phones, music players, computers and video games for this audience. One need only look at the most requested and best selling holiday items right now. Studies are showing young children are viewing for extended periods of time and pushing buttons on a daily basis but, there is only a handful of quality educational content available for these platforms out there. And most of all, we do not yet fully understand the effects or the potential these new mediums hold.
The hammer has been thrown into the children’s arena and the spotlight is upon those who create the media young children use. Just as transformed television into a teacher, it is incumbent upon this generation of developers to make sure that the next generation uses media in ways that help them learn, communicate and play.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 8:11 pm and is filed under education, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.