mass-communication-theory

CHANGING TIMES
Chapter 8 The Emergence of Critical and Cultural Theories of Mass Communication 211
Children begin watching television attentively by the age of three. Before most children
start school or form close relationships with peers, they have learned the
names of countless television characters and are fans of particular programs. By
the first day of elementary school, they are already watching nearly three hours a
day. By eight years old, they are watching four full hours. By the time they finish
high school, average teenagers will have spent more time in front of their television
sets than they will have been engaged in any other activity except sleep; this means
more time with television than in school. Most children also spend more time with
their television sets than they do communicating with their friends or family. If
other forms of media like radio, MP3 players, movies, video games, magazines,
the Internet, and newspapers are considered, the contrast between time spent with
media and time with the “actual” world and “real” people becomes even more
striking. As the authors of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s study of “Generation
M 2 ” (for “media”) argued, “As anyone who knows a teen or a tween can attest,
media are among the most powerful forces in young people’s lives today. Eight- to
eighteen-year-olds spend more time with media than in any other activity besides
(maybe) sleeping—an average of more than 7½ hours a day, seven days a week.
The TV shows they watch, video games they play, songs they listen to, books they
read, and websites they visit are an enormous part of their lives, offering a constant
stream of messages about families, peers, relationships, gender roles, sex, violence,
food, values, clothes, and an abundance of other topics too long to list. (Rideout,
Foehr, and Roberts, 2010, p. 2). Increasingly, children and young adults live in a
mediated world where face-to-face communication with others is supplemented by
and interwoven with a broad range of mediated communication, from instant- and
text-messaging to e-mail to television to movies to interactive video games.
Modern mass media dominate everyday communication. From the time children
learn to talk, they are mesmerized by the sounds and moving images of Sesame
Street. Fully 25 percent of American children under two years old have a television
set in their bedroom (Hopkinson, 2003). During the teen years, media supply vital
information on peer group culture and—most important—the opposite sex. In middle
age, as people rear families, they turn to television for convenient entertainment
and to magazines and the Internet for tips on raising teenagers. In old age, as physical
mobility declines, people turn to television for companionship and advice. Today,
not only do 54 percent of all American homes have three or more television sets, but
they house more sets (2.86) than human beings (2.5; “More Than,” 2009).
Media have become a primary means by which most of us experience or learn
about many aspects of the world around us. Even when we don’t learn about these
things directly from media, we learn about them from other people who get their
ideas of the world from media. With the advent of mass media, many forms of
folk culture fell into sharp decline. Everyday communication was fundamentally altered.
Storytelling and music making ceased to be important for extended families.
Instead, nuclear families gathered in front of an enthralling electronic storyteller.
Informal social groups dedicated to cultural enrichment disappeared, as did vaudeville
and band concerts. It is no coincidence that our culture’s respect for older people
and the wisdom they hold has declined in the age of media. If respected
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