Parental Mediation

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Parental Mediation on Children’s Media Usage & Its Effectiveness In the modern world, we are constantly in need of reevaluating how we view and treat the ever-growing onslaught of media. When people are asked what we should do about it, most people shirk the responsibility themselves and try to pawn it off to various other authority figures such as parents, the education system, and the government. The purpose of this paper is to investigate one of those: the parental role in regulating media in their children’s lives. Many studies have been dedicated to researching the effects media has on people, as well as on the effect that parental mediation (that is, the interactions parents have with their children on media and media usage) has on children …show more content…
A key reason as towards why it is, in fact, necessary, is that impression that various forms of media can have upon impressionable people, particularly children who are still developing a sense of morals and ethics. Several studies have found correlation between exposures to various types of media (such as violent games or sexual movies) and negative behaviors (such as increased aggression or sexually risky behavior) quote/cite. Most parents can agree that children tend to adopt the mannerisms and behaviors they are exposed to in a very “monkey see, monkey do” manner. Many people know stories of parents complaining about their children swearing after hearing their mother or father swear one too many times. Another reason as towards why mediation is the morality. As previously stated, children are still developing a sense of morality. People tend to continue developing and altering their morality throughout their lives, but it is very easy to alter or manipulate a child’s morals by showing them what is and what is not good at a young age. Many parents employ this impressionability to teach their children religious, political, and moral views. In mind of the topic at hand, if children are not shown that some of the content in the various forms of media is not acceptable, they will be less likely to emulate it in their own lives. If parents do not mediate their children’s media usage, children could develop and skewed or incorrect sense of