Author Archives: eolson

Reliving childhood can be fun. It can also be hard. Media can be positive. It can also be negative. And COMM123A has taught me that it’s okay to be a combination of both. I have gained a lot of new … Continue reading →

Music and film each have so much to offer in terms of lyrics and dialogue, artists and actors, and genres. Yet it seems that most content for youth, or rather the content that is popular among youth, is pretty cookie-cutter. … Continue reading →

Our recent in-class assignment forced us to look at our local media from a critical perspective.  We investigated the FCC 398 Reports from several San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland-area commercial TV stations. We were asked to put on the … Continue reading →

It is impossible to shop at Target without noticing those smiling, familiar, colorful, media-created characters sprinkled throughout the store. I had always been aware that children’s lives were commercialized but I had never considered how prevalent it actually is, until … Continue reading →

For this week, I picked two apps from the Apple App store that fell under the category of kids ages 6-8. The cool thing I learned right off the bat is that the app store has a huge selection of … Continue reading →

co-authored by Samantha Wenzel Youth are increasingly exposed to media content with sexual content, messages, and behaviors through television, film, the internet, and new media. There has been less research done on the effects on media on the sexual behaviors … Continue reading →

Franktown Rocks is a social networking experience targeted to kids 8-12 that combines games and music in a massively multi-player online game. Users create their account as a skunk, pig, bear, or hamster. There are two chat level options: free … Continue reading →

Television is still the primary way that children are introduced and engaged with media. Today’s popular programs, spanning both the commercial and public television networks, are very wide-ranging. From Jessie on Disney Channel, I watched “No Money, Mo’ Problems” and … Continue reading →

The nature/nurture debate always seems to make its way into various topics and conversations. Media content and use is no exception. Tekeuchi and Levine reference the Ecological Systems Theory which explains that children grow and learn within nested, interrelated environments. … Continue reading →

Technology and media’s impact on children today is very widespread. Like Tekeuchi and Levine state, technology is more powerful, affordable, and flexible than ever before. My generation was playing with Leap-pads and Nintendo 64s while today’s generation of kids play … Continue reading →