There is a growing consensus that modern childhood today is in a somewhat parlous state. Experts world over contend that the fast-moving, hyper-competitive modern society is damaging children mentally and emotionally. Growing children confront the tyranny of consumer and moral choice. The society at large, however, appears to be ambivalent on the issue. “Our children are in danger, fattened on fast food, corrupted by commerce, traumatized by testing. And, other children are dangerous…., chaotic in the classroom, bestial in the bedroom”, according to an analyst.
We need to look hard into the changing consumerist environment that surrounds the growing child today. The electronic media is held as a corrupting influence on modern childhood. We cannot ignore the fact that the imaginative life of children is full of violence. A visit to a playground any time will uphold this perception. But the adult world’s concerns generally are about the proliferation of technology, particularly in the home, and the challenge to adult authority that it represents.
Surely, children’s access to media, and the prevalence of sex and violence in such media, has vastly increased. Research has been documenting for years the nexus between electronic media and a medley of developmental horrors. Though some analysts believe that these studies are flawed in as much as they take violence as an objective category and fail to investigate what audiences themselves define as violent.
Read the complete Essay in May 2007 issue of The Competition Master. You can download the file from Archives section at http://www.competitionmaster.com
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