Images of men and women in the media are often based on stereotypical roles of males and females in our society. Because stereotyping can affect how children feel about themselves and how they relate to others, it's important that they learn to recognize and understand gender stereotypes in different media.
Television
Television viewing generally drops during adolescence as young people start to spend more time socializing, doing schoolwork, and using other media, such as music, video games, computers and the Internet.
Television is an inescapable part of modern culture. We depend on TV for entertainment, news, education, culture, weather, sports—and even music, since the advent of music videos.
Television is one of the most prevalent media influences in kids' lives. According to the 2011 Active Healthy Kids Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, Canadian youth ages 6-19 average about six hours of screen time per day, with TV programs (watched on a variety of different screens) accounting for much of this time. [1]
Parents of young children need to actively manage and control TV viewing in the home. Children need a variety of activities for healthy development and television can be a fun and educational part of a child's daily routine, if managed properly.
Surely you've heard of Inspector Spacetime, the cult British TV series that's run (with interruptions) since 1962. It has a tremendously active, engaged fanbase that's created blogs, videos and music devoted to it. Oh, and one more thing -- it never existed. It was made up as a thirty-second gag on the sitcom Community, as a parody-cum-homage of Doctor Who.
If you are over twenty years old, you may not be aware of the show My Life as Liz, which is part of MTV's lineup that includes Jersey Shore and The Hills and recently began airing on MTV Canada. My Life as Liz stands out from those others shows for two reasons.
Have you ever wondered why Canadian private broadcasting networks such as CTV and CanWest air certain television programs over others? Why, for instance, does CanWest air House, or CTV air Grey’s Anatomy, over other television programs?
If asked to think about community television (or public-access television, as a similar institution is called in the US) most people would probably conjure up the movie Wayne's World or its real-life analogue, The Tom Green Show: TV made by people who would, under normal circumstances, never appear on TV, shot in someone's basement or living room. Or perhaps they'd think of earnest, low-budget shows that showcase community events that wouldn't otherwise be televised, such as ethnic festivals or the Canadian Improv Games.
Halloween is perhaps the most contradictory of the major holidays. Though born in Ireland and other Celtic regions, today it is almost exclusively observed in the form that developed in North America; though closely associated with the imagination, it has been thoroughly commercialized, becoming an opportunity for children to buy costumes and then acquire candy (today it is the second largest commercial holiday in the US, after Christmas); and finally, though it is the holiday most closely associated with children, it is also one that has, traditionally, been all about fear.