Analyzing Sandra Czaja's 'Pop Star Psychology'

“Pop Star Psychology” by Sandra Czaja Scientific American Mind July/August 2011 Sean Copeland September 7,2011 Article 1

In “Pop Star Psychology”, author Sandra Czaja discusses how tv, film, and teen idols can affect children and teenagers in
both positive and negative ways. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Report, Americas youth spends about seven and a half hours a day using digital media (Video Games, Movies and TV), generally multitasking with numerous devices for around 10 hours and 45 minutes content daily. With this said, video whether it’s at the movies on a phone or on television, still dominates these. Studies have shown that movie characters and television personalities influence the beliefs of today’s youth.

In 1999 a Senate committee demonstrated that by the age of 18, average American children have seen 200,000 violent acts including 16,000 murders on television.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reports show that almost two thirds of all television shows air overtly sexual material. Studies show that being exposed to drug use, sex or violence onscreen can make them more acceptable in reality. In 2002 Madeline A. Dalton and her colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School analyzed R-rated films and their influence in connection with children, the media and risky behaviors. Surveys were conducted on about 4,500 students, ages 10 to 14. Data was collected on many factors influencing their lives (parenting characteristics, school performances, and general rebelliousness.) In this study they found 35 percent of the teens watching r-rated films had smoked and 46 percent tried alcohol. The teens that didn’t watch r-rated films were at one third the risk of smoking and drinking with all factors accounted
for.

Dalton’s group asked middle schoolers who had never smoked, to name the movies that they had seen from 50 listed films, all which featured characters smoking. Then 13 to 26 months later they asked these same teens and about 10 percent had smoked their first cigarette, concluding that kids watching films with smoking in them were more than twice as likely to try smoking as their peers. Another study done by L. Monique Ward and Kimberly Friedman of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2006 dealt with the question of teen sexuality and showed 244 high school students clips front tv shows, some illustrating one of three stereotypes: “sex is relaxing,” “women have to look good” and “ men only think about sex.”

The findings showed that heavier television viewers more than likely agreed with the stereotypes and were sexually active at early ages. Amy Bleakley and colleagues of the University of Pennsylvania performed similar studies. In 2008 they did a survey of 500 kids ages 14 to 16 and discovered that kids who viewed programming with sexual content often became sexually active at younger ages. They also found that sexually active teens preferred more sexually suggesting programming.

Some positive effects for teens is by identifying with certain characters and watching how they may work through onscreen problems or situations and learning strategies to help them deal with similar problems they may be dealing with or feel uncomfortable discussing. Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura, (the pioneer of the theory of observational learning in the 1960’s) found that teens tend to pick role models with positive traits (power, attractiveness and popularity) that basically represent themselves. Not all role models are the same but even the ones that are particularly undesirable (who reject authority), may help with teen independence, a vital step in puberty.

In 2008 Claudia Wegener of the Konrad Wolf School for Film and Television in Potsdam, Germany interviewed more than 3000 people between ages 12 and 20, finding that diehard fans among these were often socially interactive. Her findings supported Karin Lenzhofers (media researcher at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria) argument that entertainment including television, film, and music offer many role models for young women. She believed that viewing strong, positive, self-assured female performers and icons have positive effects on the self image of young women.

Key points are that the behavior of children today whether good or bad are based largely in part on the digital culture that surrounds them every day. Studies show that valuable lessons are learned by children even after sesame street years are long gone. Bonds between viewers (our children) and television characters can be established and become so powerful and momentous that they can replace actual friends.

This article is relevant in that it shows that children and teens are influenced greatly by what they see and hear in television, film, and radio and it shows that even television characters can become important role models affecting their everyday lives. With the help of adults children can have a better understanding and make sense of it all making the media a very powerful tool.

In conclusion I believe that this information can be helpful for anyone with children, in order to have a better understanding of how television, film and other forms of entertainment in our society today sculpts the minds of our youth. That with this information we can move towards trying to influence children and teens with less negative and more positive media of all types giving them a better shot at a brighter future.

Chapters 1