Examining the Important and Changing Landscape of Children’s Media

People who saw “Toy Story” in theaters as children in 1995 may now be taking their own kids to see “Toy Story 5,” a movie that deals with themes of technology, making friends and fitting in, and feelings of obsolescence.

But beyond this movie, what is the role of children’s media in child development? What are the impacts of media at different ages? How does public policy shape the children’s media landscape?

These are some of the questions that Kim Woolf — senior lecturer, academic advisor, and research director for undergraduate studies in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania —addresses in her Children and Media course, which she has been teaching at Penn since 2018.

Penn Today talked to Woolf about communication theories of children’s relationships to media and how the children’s media ecosystem has evolved.

How have you updated the class in response to changes in children’s media?

When I was a teaching assistant for the course, it was called Children and Television, and that’s because at the time, television was really what it was all about. Now I can’t even list out all the different ways that kids can access media. Streaming has become the number one way that kids are being exposed to video content, and so I’ve had to respond to that. Over the last couple years, I started adding classes about virtual reality and AI.

I’ve also added a section about mental health and the effects of content on mental health. Mental health issues are being addressed in a much more positive way in children’s media. In the 1991 film ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘crazy old Maurice’ is the way they describe [Belle’s father], and they threaten to send him to a mental institution. More recently, in ‘Arthur,’ there’s an episode where Brain is feeling a lot of anxiety related to a hurricane that had come through, and he goes to see a therapist. It’s presented in a very positive way that demonstrates coping strategies appropriate for children.

Some media, like ‘Toy Story,’ not only plays a role in child development, but also portrays child development on screen. What do different movies and TV shows get right—and wrong—about child development?

‘Toy Story’ is a nice example about kids getting older and changing their interests. On television, ‘Bluey’ does a nice job of showing the real lives of children, pressures parents have, and behavior that kids have as preschoolers.

I think as you move into shows for tweens and even teens, kids are taking on much more adult roles than kids in actuality take on. It does, I think, present a misleading image of childhood for kids, because these kids start to have some expectation that that’s how I should behave, that I’m acting like a baby because I’m still playing with toys and the 10-year-olds on TV are not.

‘Toy Story 5’ introduces a tablet as an antagonist. How have you seen representations of technology in children’s media evolve over time, and what’s the impact of that?

Television has always been treated as something we have to worry about. When I was a kid, the movie ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ featured a character named Mike Teevee, and the Oompa Loompas even had a song about how bad it was that he was spending all his time watching TV.

I was watching ‘Toy Story 5’ thinking, ‘Wow, they’re really showing what a lot of people’s perception is’—that all these kids are just sitting on their devices all the time and aren’t interacting with each other. I don’t think that’s true. By the end of the story, they’re really showing that the device can actually be part of a positive life.

If you watch shows for kids, media use is shown as part of their lives. For example, ‘Bluey’ has had a lot of episodes where some sort of device — a tablet, a phone — has a role to play. There’s one episode where the kids are FaceTiming with their cousins, and that showed a positive aspect of media use — that they get to see and spend time with relatives they might not otherwise see.

How is AI impacting children’s media?

There’s some research being done about how AI can be used to make content more engaging and educational. In their research surrounding the PBS Kids show ‘Elinor Wonders Why,’ Ying Xu and her colleagues have looked at how to use conversational AI — a chatbot within a controlled and restricted space — to help kids learn from video content.

But I think we may see more AI-created content. YouTube is probably the No. 1 place where kids are being exposed to content. I read in a newsletter from Kidscreen.com, which is an industry platform, that different owners of character licenses have started selling those licenses to create AI content, AI games, and other things. I think we’ll probably see more of that in the future.