Effects of New Media on Indian Children

Introduction

Development is pattern of change over time which begins at conception and lasts through the life span. Child Development would be termed as a process that each child undergoes in his formative years of life because it is the stage during which most development occurs. There are important and significant facets that a child undergoes in his developmental stages. Their social, emotional, physiological, physical and cognitive skills all contribute to the positive development for their future life. During these stages children are actually exploring with various things like unacceptable and acceptable behaviour. Development is phenomena that is very influential in nature be in parents, peers, teachers and more importantly the media and the way children make use of these easily accessible media.

Media has been changing its forms drastically in the coming years. Television is one such example which has been influential for children of every age and more influential among the young children. While television was a new form of Media at that point of time it was a quite passive form which was then converted into active form by various means but the control was never in audience hand. Digitalized media has had a different impact over audience now, with the emerging new media (Internet) the complete scenario of looking at media has changed. Internet has made available an easy access to its audience and been used in various parameters. It's a very active form of communication and the audience can feel importance in their day to day life.

Various researches suggest that children are critical evaluators of what they see in the media. Even very young children have been shown to actively screen media offerings for attractiveness and understandability and make an effort to interpret television images in their own terms (→ Audience; Audience Segmentation; Media Use by Children; Media Use across the Life-Span). Media use and child development are mutually related: not only does children's media use influence their development, but children's developmental level also determines their media uses and preferences. Although children may find it difficult to articulate the value of the internet (Hall and Newbury, 1999), new opportunities to communicate represent their major interest in going online. Children are getting early targeted as consumers with the use of New Media.

Review of the literature

Psychological research reveals that the electronic media play an important role in the development of attitude, emotion, social behaviour and intellectual functioning of children and youth. Only 16% of all programs portrayed negative psychological or financial effects, yet such visual depictions of pain and suffering can actually inhibit aggressive behaviour in children. Comprehensive analysis of violent interactive video game research suggests such exposure: a) increases aggressive behaviour; b) increases aggressive thoughts; c) increases angry feelings; d) decreases helpful behaviour; and e) increases physiological arousal.

Dr. Sonia Livingstone has had a remarkable experience studying the media use and youth. She has been studying the social consequences of the new media that are broadly welcomed by the children for their social activities. According to Dr. Livingstone in relation to the uses of the internet, it is increasingly recognized that young people are often more expert than adults; indeed one wonders if they have ever before received such adult admiration for their skills and expertise. At the same time she notices that if the new media environment is judged problematic, suddenly their expertise wins them an unexpected responsibility. They are then blamed for naively bringing porn into the home, giving out parents' personal details to unknown others, giving up on the old-fashioned virtues of books or long-established standards of written language and communicative etiquette.

Ethnographic study of American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics research done by Dr. Danah Boyd an American teens' engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices--self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society. Her analysis centers precisely over how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously

(1) The space constructed through networked technologies and

(2) The imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways.

Four properties--persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability--and three dynamics--invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private--are examined and woven throughout the discussion. According to her research teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens' engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.

Importance of the Study/ Rationale

This research aims to understand the impact of the new media