A Teaching Tool to Reach Gen Y
By Kindy R. Peaslee, Registered Dietitian & Certified Nutritionist
Unless you move to a mountaintop, you can't opt out of today's media culture. Media no longer just influence our culture. They are our culture. --Rosalind Silver
Perhaps a few of us do "live on a mountaintop" and have not considered the powerful scope of media literacy education in our outreach to youth. As a licensed HUGS for Teens facilitator working exclusively with the millennial generation (aged 11-17), I became aware of the media literacy component through teaching the HUGS curriculum. Each of the eight sessions in the Teen Journal has a "Media Watchdog", allowing participants to learn how to evaluate media messages. A part of the critical thinking platform of the HUGS philosophy is to teach teens how to take media out of the passive realm of the mind and place it into the active sphere.
Media literacy is an expanded view of a media-filled world. To be media literate means to be able to question, evaluate, and respond thoughtfully to the media we consume. Mass media can be defined as any form of communication produced by a few media giants for the consumption by many people – this includes print, radio, television, movies, video games, magazines, billboards, Internet sites, and even mall signage. The term "media giants" translates into a small number of very powerful corporations who own most of the media that shape current culture and politics. "We live in the most heavily mediated society in world history," according to the Action Coalition for Media Education (
When modern media culture is mixed with the strong marketing tactics of the food industry selling products to kids, nutritional issues are affected. Debbie Gordon, who has worked for the past twenty years in
It became apparent to her that the industry in which she worked had to do a better job of helping kids understand the inner workings of marketing and advertising. "Some of the astounding figures related to childhood obesity, type- 2 diabetes, lack of exercise, and media consumption suggested to me we had to help kids make wiser, better-informed health and lifestyle choices," says Gordon. She feels that junk food advertising and media saturation aren't the entire problem but they are a big part of the issue. \
Now as managing director and facilitator of Mediacs, a media literacy company that provides workshops and curriculum to elementary and middle school kids, Gordon knows she is making a difference in the world of getting the word out on media literacy. Gordon helps kids understand the who, what, when, where and why of advertising by teaching how products are developed and the recurring themes used to sell to kids like licensing, wacky colors, and animal shapes. She often brings a small grocery store worth of products into the classroom. According to Gordon, "the kids absolutely love the workshop, and the fact that I am able to share the inside scoop on the advertising business with them." The principle message of the workshops is to understand what healthy eating and healthy living is and then balance it with these "treat" foods. Kids are then empowered to recognize that it's their body and ultimately their responsibility to treat it with respect. Often parents will provide feedback to Gordon to say the workshop has changed the way their kids look at food.
Gordon was just one of the many media educators and health professionals from around the globe that I met at the June 2003
American youth are also being influenced on various levels by the media they are digesting daily. More than 17 million teenagers use the Internet on a regular basis. In fact, American youth over age 8 spend the equivalent of a full time work week, 6 hours and 43 minutes per day using media. This can be further broken down into an average of up to 40,000 television commercials being seen by youth each year.(1) Strikingly, kids are spending only 900 hours a year in the classroom and approximately 1500 hours a year watching TV. By age 13, a young person has watched about 15,000 hours of television. (2)
Christopher Lloyd, keynote speaker of the Cornell University Nutritional Concerns Conference last year, summed up the statistics with a different slant in his talk entitled, "Read any good media lately? What a consumer culture does to nutrition". Lloyd should know: for the past thirteen years he has been a
MTV knows this well by targeting an audience aged 12-34 years old. In fact, an executive at MTV was quoted as saying, "We don't influence the kids, we own them". MTV is the world's most watched television network, reaching 384 million households.
Two recent and separate studies reinforce how media influence does affect body dissatisfaction in boys and girls. In one study, kids aged 8 to 11 years old participated in a multidimensional media influence scale. Results showed that both boys and girls had body dissatisfaction, but for girls the dissatisfaction was on a higher level and internalized more than for boys.(3) Teenage Research Unlimited says the typical teenager spends about 2.8 hours a week reading magazines. Advertising messages that say beauty can be bought occupies 46% of the content of girl's magazines. Sadly, teenagers are trying to measure up to images that sell products and that 99.9% or more of people in this world will never attain. "Kids waste terrible amounts of time, energy, and money on pursuit of the dream only to be let down over and over again," comments CPYU's Walt Mueller, author of Understanding Today's Youth Culture.
According to researchers at the University of Minnesota, girls who were frequent readers of articles about dieting and weight loss in magazine articles were seven times more likely to engage in unhealthy weight control and six times more likely to engage in extreme dieting than those who reported never or hardly ever reading such articles. Boys who frequently read magazines about dieting were also four times more likely to engage in extremely unhealthy weight control behaviors. (4)
The research confirms what most of us working with adolescents already know; we need healthier media messages. Health care providers and educators, specifically, registered dietitians and dietetic technicians, can be advocates for more positive media messages regarding body image and healthy weight management. One of the outcomes of media literacy is to empower youth to make right choices after deconstructing media messages. A media market, filled with more healthy messages, will emerge and help to prevent disordered eating.
A strong advocate of the preventive media message is the New Mexico Media Literacy Project (NMMLP), an organization that takes no money from advertising or big media. NMMLP was founded in 1993 by former ABC News anchor and veteran broadcaster, Hugh Downs, who did not like the trends he was seeing in television programming.
The project believes media literate kids can learn how to see through the surface of today's media to understand how and why they are being manipulated. NMMLP believes a media literate child can be a healthier child. Their vision is to lead a cultural revolution in health, democracy and lifestyle choices on the premise that today's media create youth culture. Bob McCannon, Executive Director of NMMLP, says, "There is absolutely no substitute for parental involvement in the consumption of any form of media, media literacy begins in the home; you can turn off the TV, but you can't turn off the culture."
Lori Irving, Associate Professor of Psychology, at
She suggests a series of practical questions that can be asked when communicating with teenagers to encourage critical thinking,
· Which books/magazines/newspapers do you read for nutrition and exercising information?
· How does the information you read affect what you eat/how you feel about what you eat?
· What would it be like to avoid reading fashion magazines? How would it affect your eating/exercise patterns?
· What is the goal of the publisher/author? Are they trying to educate or sell books/products?
· Does the information make sense? Does it contradict what you know is true?
Another tool is to teach teens how to "talk back" to harmful media messages by creating counter-ads. Media literacy skills can be applied using parodies of advertisements to communicate positive messages in a fun exercise. An example would be to create a magazine ad making fun of advertising messages in a current magazine.
Nationally, programs are being launched which combine a fitness message with a media literacy component. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is debuting their Media Smart Youth program targeted for youth aged 11-13. The goal of the program is to teach kids how to make healthy choices about nutrition and physical activity by helping them understand how media can influence their lives. It encompasses a free curriculum that integrates fitness with media awareness and media production.
Using money from an anti-trust settlement, Health Trek is another outreach education program using media literacy to teach middle school youth about tobacco, fitness, and nutrition. Interactive exhibits, media literacy curriculum, and a Public Service Announcement (
Many resources are now available that can be used to promote media literacy. I hope your mind is spinning with new ideas and possibilities on how to incorporate the findings and research from this article to promote healthier body image messages in both the media and Generation Y. Not only is it an adventurous way to engage young people, but media awareness is a preventative model for disordered eating issues. You will never look at a TV ad or read a magazine the same way again. We can make a difference by teaching the next generation to march to the beat of a different drummer and start a cultural revolution that begins with healthy bodies and healthy minds.
Dig Deeper
Source: Christopher Lloyd
What to look for in a TV ad:
References
Kindy R. Peaslee is a registered dietitian and certified nutritionist. She coordinates the HUGS.com for Teens Online Class, a 4-week online teen lifestyle program for guys and girls ages 11-17.
Email: kindy@hugs.com or visit www.hugs.com
The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding and the author grant permission for this article to be copied in its entirety, provided the copies are distributed free of charge and the copies indicate the source as the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding and the author as Kindy R. Peaslee.
For more information on resources to help you understand today's rapidly changing youth culture, contact the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.
2003, Kindly R. Peaslee