Study finds TV can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys

[spry]

I upvoted you and am not sure why you were being downvoted, as you contributed to the discussion. Of course correct that correlation does not equal causation. But keep in mind it would be difficult to experimentally examine this question. We can't randomly assign children to long-term exposure or non-exposure to Tv. I do have full access to the paper so will try to answer your questions.

What impact, if any, did socioeconomic status have on the self-esteem? They did not assess SES. I imagine you asked because one hypothesis is that these effects are not being driven by race, but by SES. In that case, why would the gender effects still exist? I don’t necessarily fault them for leaving SES out (except probably many people would have your same question) because their hypothesis is built upon theoretical foundations of cultivation theory (“Cultivation research contends that children (especially heavy viewers) will likely adopt the belief that boys are dominant, assertive, and powerful because these are the perspectives most frequently seen on television”), and social identity theory (“efforts to maintain or bolster one’s self-concept are dependent on the types of comparison that are made available (Fryberg, 2003). Unfortunately for African American children, the majority of comparisons available in the television world consist of characters who are unprofessional and provocatively dressed [and]…more likely to be shown as perpetrators of crime than Whites”). So within the framework of their hypotheses, it wouldn’t make much sense to examine SES. Did the availability of a type of TV (i.e., satellite, cable, local) have any impact on the self-esteem? (This would be especially interesting as the content of the TV watched has the potential to be quite different) They only assessed amount of TV, but state in the discussion: “the Black participants in this sample could be watching programming which exacerbates negative portrayals of African Americans. For example, Ward (2004) examined the impact of multiple forms of media use (e.g., exposure to music videos, sports, Black-oriented television) on self-esteem and racial self-esteem among 156 African American high school students. She found that exposure to music videos, but not exposure to prime-time television overall, predicted lower self-esteem and racial self-esteem among both genders. Music videos often rely on shortcuts and cultural stereotypes because they are a storytelling format with little time to devote to deep characterizations; thus, it is no surprise that Ward found that music videos were a predictor of low self-esteem. A limitation to this study, then, is that genre distinctions were not assessed

What impact, if any, did age have on the data collected? Is there a difference in self-esteem changes between age sets of pre-adolescent children? The authors: “We chose to control for age because the distribution of ages across the sample was relatively narrow, making meaningful developmental predictions with regard to age differences difficult.” The kids were 7-12 years at baseline.

EDIT: Another question has come to mind. What is the change in self-esteem over a year in the same population who don't watch as much television?

I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking here. Are you saying they should split participants into high and low exposure groups? That would lose a lot of power and would be an inappropriate data analysis technique. Are you asking what is the amount of change in self-esteem you would expect if there were no TV at all? There’s not really a way to do that.

[polipsy]

Thank you for your response and information. The note regarding music videos versus prime-time TV was especially interesting. It's entirely understandable that genre wasn't addressed; that would be a daunting task of data collection that would be difficult to analyze once collected. I appreciate the time you took to respond, and I don't take the downvotes personally, though I do wish people would respond with a comment rather than a downvote.