"You just have to join in" - A mixed-methods study on children's media consumption worlds and parental mediation

24a7-2025-12-29_16_33_28-100000.pdf

Caroline Roth-Ebner "You just have to join in" - A mixed-methods study on children's media consumption worlds and parental mediation

Abstract: In contemporary society, childhood is characterized as mediatized and commercialized. Media consumption worlds are a phenomenon that mirrors both aspects. They are narratives that are presented through various media platforms, games, and merchandising products. In this paper, the concept of children's media consumption worlds is developed theoretically and investigated empirically using the case of primary school children's appropriation of media consumption worlds as well as parental mediation and attitude in Austria and Germany. A mixed-methods design was applied, starting with qualitative interviews with children and their parents and followed by an online survey for parents. The study revealed that children find individual ways to deal with media consumption worlds, some of which foster creativity and self-expression but also consumerism. The parents' attitude is ambivalent. They view media consumption worlds as beneficial in terms of creativity, positive values, and as peer group experience. However, parents observe critically that media consumption worlds lure children to the media and to consumption.

One Introduction: Childhood in a mediatized world

In contemporary societies, children are surrounded by, and exposed to, media from the day of their birth and even before. The media act as central sources of information and "agents of socialization". They provide orientation, offer room for conversation with parents but even more with peer groups, and give guidance for working on identities. No other socialization agent will teach them more about the world than the media, as Dafna Lemish put it for the medium of television. Above all, the children's favorite characters presented on different platforms become role models that act as guides and companions through socialization. The ubiquity of mobile internet-enabled devices in households and the creation of ever new electronic 'toys' with licensed images from movies and TV series such as children's editions of digital cameras, smartphones, and even interactive toys help girls and boys to draw from a vast repertoire of media. Today, digital media play a role even for the youngest. According to an Austrian survey addressed to parents, almost three-quarters of the zero- to six-year-old children use internet-enabled devices at least occasionally - and that from an average age of twelve months. The wide range of apps existing for toddlers corresponds with this phenomenon. The older the children are, the more their bedrooms are equipped with media devices that enable private media use. In times of convergent media and cross or transmedia productions, the young no longer access media in the form of isolated and finalized practices but across platforms as a holistic experience. Regardless of specific practices, the media's relevance has recently increased markedly, since the Covid-nineteen pandemic, the school closures and social distancing that followed it all contributed to increased media use among children.

Childhood in its entangled relationship with the media can be described as mediatized childhood. For the purpose of the research at hand, three aspects of a children's mediatized environment are singled out:

First, childhood is increasingly becoming commercialized. Marketers establish a consumer-friendly environment, for instance, with media brands distributed through a multiplicity of platforms and products. The occurrence and acceptance of digital media have pushed the already existing commercialization of childhood, including new developments such as kidfluencers on social media. Since children influence their parents' buying decisions, they are addressed as customers at an ever-younger age. Moreover, marketing not only affects purchases but children's identities as well. The commodification of childhood has even led to the invention of the marketing term "tween" for pre-adolescent boys and girls, aged between eight and twelve, who marketers address in specific ways. Shirley R. Steinberg labels the corporate children's consumer culture "Kinderculture", emphasizing that the industry calls upon the young as agential, autonomous, and hedonistic in their attempt to make profits.

Second, children's media are segregated along the lines of gender stereotypes. Although much effort has been put into disregarding and subverting gender constructions, children's media and toys, and the respective marketing strategies persist in being differentiated in terms of gender representations and roles. Offers for boys tend to be associated with activity and rationality, offers for girls with relationships and emotions and give special attention to female characters' appearance. Moreover, the "nature of brands is deeply gendered" as there are brands addressed to girls and others to boys. Moreover, kids are targeted by marketers as adults at a very early stage. In this regard, Meenakshi Gigi Durham coined the term "Lolita effect". It describes the increasing involvement of ever-younger girls in a "sphere of fashion, images, and activities that encourage them to flirt with a decidedly grown-up eroticism and sexuality". This manifests itself in the form of "hypersexualized girls" with unrealistic bodies devised by the media. They imply a world of sexual desire accessible through "consumerism". Even if there has been a trend towards strong female figures ("girl power") in the recent past, the unrealistic and sexualized body standards remain unchanged.

Third, media addressing the young are marketed globally. "the control of children's media is largely in the hands of a few transnational media conglomerates that dominate the rest of the media landscape." Hence, in many national markets, the most popular media brands come from those global players. These global productions can maximize profit using integrated marketing and by producing multimedia content and large volumes of licensed goods. What Lemish claims for television is also true for the converging media markets: "Today, children are part of a global audience that transcends local or even regional physical and cultural boundaries in consumption of television programs." This global audience appropriates movies and TV shows, admires celebrities and sports idols from every part of the world. However, local productions still have their relevance, which will be addressed later. As Lemish notes for global TV shows, they are most often North American and - in second position - European productions, which fosters the Western-centric view and is subject to cultural bias.