Marketing Violence: The Special Toll on Young Children of Color

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2003 by Levin, Diane E, Carlsson-Paige, Nancy

It is important to realize that children do not understand what they see in the media the way adults do because they think differently than adults (Levin, 1998). While individual children make their own unique meanings from what they see and hear, how young children think helps explain why they are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of viewing violence in the media and to negative messages about race.

Young children tend to focus on the dramatic and concrete aspects of whatever they see; they do not look beneath the surface at motivations, intentions, and abstract ideas (Piaget, 1965). In addition, children do not make logical causal connections between events and tend to focus on one idea at a time-as if they were viewing a series of single slides rather than a movie with connected actions. Because of this, when young children see violence, it is the most vivid action, the biggest weapons, and the blood that captures their attention and has an impact on them. They focus on the most graphic, concrete aspects of what they see and do not understand the violence in a context. They do not think about what sequence of events might have led to what happened or what caused the violence or the consequences of the violence for the perpetrators or victims (Carlsson-Paige & Levin, 1990).

Because of young children's focus on the concrete and their inability to connect actions with their effects, they are particularly vulnerable to glamorized violence shown in the media. When children see the violence, it looks exciting, powerful, and the method of choice for resolving conflicts. They try to act it out before they can fully understand its meaning or are fully able to think through how it affects others. Teachers often report how surprised some children are when the violent actions they imitate in play hurt other children. The desensitization to violence described by researchers begins at an early age and is fueled by glamorized violence shown to children before they are able to understand its effects (Carlsson-Paige & Levin, 1991).

These same characteristics of young children's thinking also make them especially vulnerable to messages in the media about race. Because of young children's tendency to focus on salient and visible features, the attributes of characters in the media that have the greatest impact on them will tend to be their physical characteristics and actions. Thus, children notice skin color, facial features, voices, and actual physical behavior (e.g., foreign sounding voices, and violent actions) more than subtler character traits. They also tend to focus on characteristics that are "like me" and "not like me," so children will notice features in good and bad buys that are like and not like themselves, including how race is portrayed. Because of mass marketing and media cross feeding, children are likely to see the same images and actions relating to race repeated over and over again-on TV and films, and in a range of products, videos, and toys. This repeated exposure establishes the traits of individual characters seen in the media firmly in children's minds and affects the concepts they build about their own identity and that of other racial groups. Teachers have described how children adhere rigidly to these character traits in their play and resist teachers' attempts to vary them (Carlsson-Paige & Levin, 1987). The negative messages about race carried in so much children's popular media combined with children's special vulnerability to these messages makes the negative lessons about race taught to all children via media especially worrisome.