Television, Viewer Age and

Age is generally regarded as one of the most fundamental structuring factors with regard to the television audience. However, it should be noted that age in itself is not an explanatory variable but rather a convenient indicator of various kinds of development that are normal in human beings as they pass through the life span. These include biological-sexual development, cognitive development, and social development.

Any discussion of the relationship between young children and TV use should include an understanding of cognitive development (i.e., the ways in which we learn to think and process information). During the course of cognitive development, children become less dependent on immediate perception, and their [Page 821]ability to deal with multiple dimensions expands, providing them with greater means and resources for using the media. Consequently, levels of TV viewing tend to increase throughout childhood, although there are significant variations according to factors such as gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. There is also evidence that because they tend to be hungrier for all kinds of information, up until the age of about 9 or 10 years, those children who are cognitively more developed watch more TV than their less-developed peers. However, they also tend to start losing interest in TV earlier as it no longer provides them with adequate cognitive or informational gratifications.

Studies differ with regard to the exact moment at which mean levels of TV viewing peak in childhood, some reporting it as early as 9 and others at 11 years of age or even later. Moreover, there is evidence that the arrival of music television channels has increased the age at which the peak occurs, although, more recently, this has been at least partly offset by the growth in popularity of computer game playing (especially among boys) and online chatting (especially among girls). What is certain is that between 9 and 13 years old, children experience a radical shift in program preferences as they become more selective and their tastes more differentiated. The result is a move away from more child-oriented to more adult-oriented patterns, accompanied by a move away from conventional TV channels to more specialized ones. Thus, genres such as action-based programs, films, and music (indeed, anything that provides a window on the world in general and adult life in particular) increase in popularity at the expense of children's programs and cartoons. However, program preferences remain heavily structured by gender so that, at this age, it is not too much to claim that boys and girls inhabit different media worlds.

With the onset of puberty, biological-sexual and social development become of central importance for television use. The striving for independence lessens orientations to the family, and as more and more time is spent outside the home, the importance of the peer group increases. Concomitantly, levels of TV viewing tend to fall significantly as other forms of media—above all, music, but also, more recently, the Internet—come to better fulfill the sets of needs and motives of individuals and the groups to which they belong. However, because females enter puberty on average 2 years earlier than males, it is once again essential to control for gender when analyzing these processes. Ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and even nutritional factors (height and weight gain are excellent indicators of the timing of puberty) also affect the timing and rate of pubertal development.

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