Today I shared my thoughts about Children, Adolescents, and the Media with the editors of the Journal of Children and Media. I thought I would share the fruits of my brainstorm here.
• What are the key issues facing our field?
Developing recommendations for youths’ mobile device use, considering both context and users’ developmental level
Supporting youths’ development of judgment skills, especially in terms of determining and verifying credibility of information
Developing ways to assess quality of digital games, both for scholars’ evaluation and parents’/teachers’ purchasing decisions
Developing ways to assess media in terms of psychophysiological impact, e.g., stimulating or relaxing qualities
Recommending exemplars in both areas (e.g., useful tools for helping to energize lethargic or “stuck in a rut” children, useful tools for helping over-stimulated children to calm down & learn to self-regulate)
Championing participatory action research and policy-making processes that meaningfully respect youths’ perspectives
Investigating the potential and effectiveness of media products to support competence in analog processes, such as deciphering facial expressions and body language or collaborating offline
Developing, piloting, and assessing strategies for negotiating interpersonal communication about media products in order to manage the impact of their messages (either facilitating resistant readings or boosting EE lessons)
• …The Journal is especially interested in addressing topics from a global perspective.
Over the past two years, I have had the opportunity to work with youths in Senegal and India in summer enrichment programs; participants in the former program were low-income and teen-aged while participants in the latter program were economically privileged and younger than 9 years old.
Despite these differences, youths in both contexts lacked access to educational spaces where experts supervised hands-on investigation and experimentation. Youths were accustomed to either receiving “pre-fab” curricula at school or independently tinkering at home (or not tinkering at all). The “guide on the side” dynamic was absent.
I wonder how media products, both narratives and software, might help to bridge that gap by modeling and/or facilitating supported exploration. This might be a scale-able way to boost quality of life and innovation.
• Titles of books you would like to see reviewed in the Journal.
Harkin et al. (2012). Talking Treasure: Stories to Help Build Emotional Intelligence and Resilience in Young Children.