Childhood Lost?

Blog Reflection 3

Part I of David Buckingham’s book After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media spends a considerable amount of time exploring notions of the loss of childhood facing today’s kids. According to some in Buckingham’s circle of researchers, the innocence of childhood is being eroded as electronic media make it easier for children to access “adult” content. What I mean by “adult” in this context goes beyond that which would be deemed sexually inappropriate for young viewers. Rather, the book explores more about children gaining access to materials for which they are not yet emotionally mature enough to handle. This includes materials that are either violent in nature or contain explicit language.

As Buckingham points out, during the age of print it was easier for adults to safeguard their children from material that was deemed inappropriate or “adult” in nature. The advent of television required that parents take on the responsibility of screening what their children could and could not see in the home environment. During the formative years of television, this didn’t present a major problem as the range of TV channels was somewhat limited. The evolution of television media from analog to cable, and, finally, digital cable, brought with it added challenges for parents who were wanting to control what their children could see on TV. But as television technology evolved, so did screening mechanisms such as the V-chip and TV ratings system. However, many conrol methods are being rendered mute as Internet and streaming video technologies make it increasingly easy for children to gain access to the proverbial “forbidden fruit.”

Perhaps the most alarming trend that Buckingham’s book addresses is idea that television has eaten away at a child’s ability to develop their own sense of voice and imagination. Buckingham sites Barry Sanders’ A is for Ox in which Sanders postulates that television has torn away time that had traditionally been set aside for family conversation and oral story-telling (Buckingham, p. 30). I agree with Saunders’ theory to a point. Television has certainly carved its niche into the everyday lives of many families in the modern world. But I also feel that television brings with it several positive qualities in acting as a window to the outside world that had been previously unavailable. While television has undoubtedly shoved some elements of oral story-telling aside, it can also provide information (mostly in the form of news) that serve as the impetus of meaningful family discussion.

My initial feelings on the concept that childhood is “dying” are mixed. At this point in Buckingham’s presentation, I agree that some aspects of childhood innocence are being paired away by a buffet of media choices that are proving to be somewhat slippery as adults scramble to find ways to control it. But I would stop short of calling this the “death” of childhood. Rather, I would hypothesize that childhood is evolving, much like the electronic media that is allegedly assaulting childhood innocence.