Creating a Guide to Youth-Centered Media

My long-form capstone essay about the way young people absorb news media as they grow up.

The fact that you even thought to click on this post means a lot to me. I've been volunteering with kids since the second I was older than them, and I've always had this pull in my soul to help them gain power through knowledge. That pull is part of why I majored in journalism, but I never found any set of tools for youth-focused media like those we had been taught for other demographics. So I made my longest research project a gift to myself, and to the freeing love that trustworthy information can give to a child. I hope the information in this essay can be a gift to you too.

From the time Mister Rodgers’ Neighborhood made its debut on February 19, 1968 (Fred Rogers company, 1968) its intention was to speak into a child’s sense of safety and friendship. TV Parental Guidelines rated it appropriate for all ages, but its target audience was for a preschool age group: between two and six (CPB, 2004).

In the world outside of the neighborhood he formed, change had begun to sweep over the fabric of society. The space race was in full swing as undertones of powerful weapons motivated competitive advancements between the US and the then-USSR, and Americans were prepping themselves to land on the moon a year later. Demands for equality came as a shout from the Civil Rights Movement, the second wave of feminism and the newly-born LGBT movement; although these platforms were based on nonviolent platforms, violence tended to find them anyway in the form of protests and police raids. Natural disasters were consistent concerns, like the category 5 Hurricane Camille that would make history a year after the show aired (Simpson & Sugg p. 293).

Throughout these and other newsworthy events, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood created a shelter of consistent security. Many grew up on the words he said, which still resonate with audiences of now-adults to this day. This concept was repeated in different forms across many episodes, but it stands out as a quote from a 1986 article in the Orlando Sentinel that he penned himself:

“I was spared from any great disasters when I was little, but there was plenty of news of them in newspapers and on the radio, and there were graphic images of them in newsreels. For me, as for all children, the world could have come to seem a scary place to live… There was something else my mother did that I've always remembered: 'Always look for the helpers,' she'd tell me. 'There's always someone who is trying to help’” (Rogers, Orlando Sentinel 1986).

Children have been tangibly involved in public life over the shoulders of adults for a long time, whether or not they’re democratically accounted for or spoken to directly. It’s objectively and scientifically possible for a child to be affected in feelings and actions by what they see to the point of needing adult reassurance of environment security, in a long-term reaction that may range from fear to disinterest to inspiration.

Niemen Reports, the US’s leading TV and internet surveyor group, takes the time to count viewers as young as two for television programs (Spotted Ratings, 2004); from an advertising and marketing standpoint in the television, print, and digital sphere, children and youth are an objectively substantial audience demographic. The demographic of age is unique from other demographics like race or location or gender, in that the changes from one age level to another will always be predictable and reliable. Specifics about these changes can vary in different cases in different years, which can range from an individual person to a few years’ worth of technological advances. Ultimately, knowledge about these changes together can aim to prove the commercial and moral value of a youth audience.

The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, published a syllabus on children’s rights in news and media representation (2007) which states that advances in technology and journalistic methods “enable greater child and youth participation in the media, and therefore in society as a whole, in terms of informing, supporting and influencing their peers, and adults too” (p.140). As with all stakeholders in news media, the focus on young people as members of news events creates an environment where being an audience member can mean being an active contributor; it has a full capacity to inspire the beginning of finding one’s democratic rights to freedom of unadorned truth as a knowledge base (Merrill, 2011).

The purpose of this endeavor is to begin from a ground level of basic knowledge and work along a common hierarchy of needs, all the way to a sense of purpose that concludes with a mission statement. Because a child learns how to interpret hypotheticals in literature at or around age seven (Wolf, 2007, p.141), starting at this point provides accurate clues into how a child learns how to perceive the world outside the neighborhood of events that the child experiences firsthand. The mystery of developmental milestones leading up to a person’s ability to fulfill their democratic duty by voting at age 18 can be unearthed through child psychology, so a logical span of focus would include ages between 7 and 18. A thorough look into the developmental psychology studies of Piaget and more can also create a framework for dispelling myths and securing truths about what content is inappropriate for different ages, like real-life issues of gray morality or certain types of natural disasters. Dispelling myths involving potential parental paranoia also would be best served to include the Internet and its tools, along with the positive and negative effects that recent technology has on today’s youth audience and their information retention abilities.

Finally, marrying these concepts of interior and exterior influence together can provide an indication of an ethical and moral framework for a mission statement that professionals with young audiences can utilize, for the sake of leaving fears behind in favor of engaging passion for the window and mirror to the world. This mission statement and its framework may be beneficial for a wide spectrum of experts in the field of journalism; from newsroom reporters of stations whose demographics may involve families, to creators specifically tasked with structuring time-sensitive nonfiction content for youth audiences.

The dichotomy of the press is the same used in many theories of parenting: the question of freedom versus responsibility. A journalist’s job is far from that of a parent or guardian, or even an educator, but theories of those contrasting ideals are held to just as high of a standard, if not more, when dealing with children. Should reporters lean on the Libertarian theory, that youth are “capable of organizing the world around him and of making decisions that will advance his interests” (Siebert, 1956)? Or are reporters working with and for the youth “obliged to be responsible to society for carrying out certain essential functions of mass communication in contemporary society” (Peterson, 1956)? The answer for this dichotomy comes from research and the unadorned truth, ultimately for the goal of serving a long-lasting and effective public sphere.

In order to create a set of guidelines that encompass the idea of communicating with future adults in the present, the ongoing task of connecting scientific facts to moral theories is necessary to understand this audience in a growing field of complex communication methods, and to find underlying truths within. With that, approaching the topic with rational thought begins with the science of rational thought itself.

Inside the Expanding Mind

Studying the development of the brain is essential for understanding the nuances of a child’s response to information and what ages are most ready to be positively affected by different types of information. Any given media travels through multiple different areas of the brain after being processed through the senses of anyone who sees or hears it, every part of which is responsible for different tasks and, in turn, different responses. For example, the limbic system, “located immediately between the topmost cortical layer of the brain, underlies our ability to feel pleasure, disgust, horror, and elation in response to what we read” (Wolf, 2007, p.141). This system is present and active as a child learns how to read, asserts Wolf (2007), which commonly occurs before age ten. On the other hand, the prefrontal cortex, which “coordinates higher-order cognitive processes and executive functioning”, doesn’t gain full efficiency “until the early 20’s or later” (Johnson, Blum, Giedd, 2009). Therefore, the ability to both understand a written event as completely real and to react with rational thought is a uniquely adult ability; until then, this can explain why some issues and concepts simply cannot be understood fully by those in this range, especially when those concepts can’t call for a clearly defined line between problem and solution. In many, this capacity for executive function based on rational thought doesn’t fully activate until well into age 25 (Johnson, Blum, Giedd, 2009), a relatively long while after a path to a Bachelor’s degree ends in some students.

Understanding and appreciating the brain as a physical organ takes the discrepancies of growth in mind; in order to invite these stakeholders into a story that can both represent them and account for them, efforts to understand the priorities of every age group, and along which lines to group these ages in correspondence with the subject matter, are key. Understanding the minds of a youth audience leads to understanding their memories’ ability, their mental mobility and their morality.

Child psychologist Jean Piaget’s study of children led him to a defined age group that accepts the use of symbols to “use one object or action to represent an absent one… during the sixth stage of sensori-motor development” (Crain, 1980). He called this the concrete operational stage, which takes place in most neurotypical children between ages seven and 11. The ability to begin using sequential thinking independently begins at this stage, as they learn which inferences are universal and which are not. This is the stage where Hayakawa’s bare definition of inferences comes into play; the use of a “statement about the unknown based on the known” (Hayakawa, 1989) is exposed as a novelty at this point and becomes understandable for that age over time. With this information, media professionals can knowledgeably adjust their content to reach their youngest readers if necessary, even if they happen to be as young as first grade.

Piaget’s subsequent psychological development stage is also the last one specifically named on the path to adult-level maturity: the formal operational period, which occurs in people between 11 and 15 years of age (Lewis, 2018). This level is defined by the use of abstract thought and deductive reasoning to come to conclusions, as well as a dissolving of egocentric thought processes and “now [understanding] that everyone does not see things in the same way that he does” (Lewis, 2018). Both the concrete and the formal operational periods are defined by the individual’s capability to understand hypothetical (or at least distant) situations as real and equally deserving of logic, as well as concepts of equality and fairness when not applied directly to the individual.

According to an interpretation of the 2003 National Adult Literacy Survey by Impact Information Services (2013), most adults read at a 9th grade literacy level and most newspapers are written at an 11th grade level. The survey was conducted using methods that involved tasks exclusively surrounding specific texts, not interpretations of them that would require exterior knowledge (Kuntner et. al, p.3). Currently, professional journalists speak to the uppermost levels of the formal operational stage, and the audience’s ability to logically deduce outcomes based on relatively sparse and disconnected information. If one were to exclusively analyze journalism’s current ethical priority based solely on these findings, a heavy theme of libertarian theory would come into play the most; giving those in this adolescent stage the most logical type of story format would follow the same trust level as Siebert assumed for fully-fledged adult audiences (Siebert, 1956).

Piaget’s study of moral development in children and adolescents reinforces the concept of moral ownership, in a sense; the stage at which young people assume autonomous morality, or the ability to recognize intentions as important factors in others’ decision-making and consequences, occurs at almost exactly the same time as the switch to the formal operational stage (Wolf, 2007). By comparison, the moral development stage previous to autonomous morality is one based in a concept called heteronomous morality, defined by a heavy focus on consequence and the constancy of authority and rules. A comparison could be made of the nuances between consequence-focused teleological and motive-focused deontological ethics (Merril, 1997), but this hardly accounts for the growth of detail between these two when applied to autonomous adult audiences.

Piaget’s study of youth indicates two distinct stages of cognitive existence in both ethical and intellectual respects, and a “flip” between the two stages that tends to occur in the same life stage in the average neurotypical child. Coupling studies of moral learning with literacy levels and operational stages, evidence points to the “flip” occurring somewhere in the neighborhood of ten or eleven years old as an ideal stage of life to begin introduction of relatively difficult issues in many news stories. At this point, a child can use inferences, symbols and self-formed cognitive paths to interpret what they read, even if the story doesn’t define a clear line of conflict or a yes or no answer. Aside from the reprioritizing of fact over emotion that comes from the frontal lobe 15 years after this development, a person around 5th or 6th grade is conceivably capable of understanding and learning from an average news article or package in a way that involves self-motivated interpretation. Before this age, adjustments to the foundation of the news story could be necessary in order to avoid being lost in adult-to-child translation.

Older Brains and Newer Media

Past the age of 5th and 6th grade, further changes in the brains of most youth refine thought processes to reflect new facets in perceptions of others, and how others relate back to their own selves. According to Bastable and Dart (2011), as the formal operational stage settles in;

Teenagers can become obsessed with what they think as well as what others are thinking, a characteristic known as adolescent egocentricism. They begin to believe that everyone is focusing on the same things they are – namely, themselves and their activities. Elkind (1984) labeled this belief as the imaginary audience, a type of social thinking that has considerable influence over an adolescent’s behavior (p. 173).

They go on to mention other psychosocial landmarks that define the general adolescent existence, one marked by an introspective and feelings-based process of understanding the surrounding world that news and other media present. One landmark that most adolescents around 15 years old and younger ascribe to is the idea of personal fable: that aging, permanent injury and other life repercussions happen to other people, and accepting that those consequences or accidents can apply to them personally is difficult to accept (Bastable & Dart, 2011). Another concept that they may experience is the sense of identity conflicting with the sense of role, which results in a likelihood for the teenager to indulge in comparing themselves to people they perceive to be better than them or even perfect, especially individuals they may see in the media. They often slip into this without meaning to, in the same pattern that addictions appear in those that isolate themselves (Bastable & Dart, 2011).

Understanding an adolescent’s apparent self-centeredness not as a moral downfall but as an important stage in growth may help to conceptualize their unique variables in the perception of news stories and current events. As mentioned previously, the relatively delayed development of the prefrontal cortex means that youth audiences around this age have nearly all the tools available to absorb a written or spoken news story, except for a clearly defined presence of impulse control (Johnson, Blum, Giedd, 2009). All these generalized facts together can also explain how the Internet and its affiliate systems associate themselves so strongly with teenagers, and other young people who generally accept the world’s events by utilizing the mirror aspect of news more than the window aspect.

Unfortunately for the sake of systematic comparison to the study of child and youth psychology, the Internet and social media have not existed for the same amount of time and therefore do not have the same breadth of study and information about their multifaceted effects on youth audiences under 18. However, quite a few studies have shown that the effect the Internet has on young people often depends on a few factors. A longitudinal field study called the HomeNetToo project was conducted in 2000 on 140 children around 13 years old, and it found at the time that children of low- to mid-income families had a relatively balanced and often beneficial experience when using the Internet (Jackson, vo Eye & Biocca, 2003). In fact, children who tended to use the Internet more in this study saw a rise in their GPA and their reading test scores than those who used it less (Jackson et. al, 2003).

This study shows that the Internet has the objective capacity to inform and improve the lives of growing minds, at least in some measure. However, the culture and expectations of the Internet look different 18 years later, and studies on its effects sometimes can barely stay relevant with its speed in changing. A survey-based study from the Pew Research Center found that about 68% of American adults noted that they seek news product primarily on social media, especially on Facebook at an average of 43% of use (Matsa & Shearer, 2018).

Pew Research also discovered specific information regarding American adolescent use of social media; in this population Facebook use specifically has fallen from a 71% majority between 2014 and 2015, to 51% in 2018 (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). The youth surveyed for this project were also asked about positive and negative aspects of social media use; in general, the second highest reason that social media was toted as a mostly positive thing was that it made it “easier to find news and/or info” (Anderson & Jiang, 2018).

The question of Internet use combined with its often-targeted age group is one full of paradoxes and priority abnormality, especially with such confliction as the need to simultaneously fit in and stand out, along with achievement focus leading to often-unhealthy idolism and comparison (IOM and NRC, 2011). Thanks to Pew Research and others, more research and surveys will continue to discover lasting effects of technology on the later stages of growing minds in the near future.

General Guidelines and Tools

As mentioned previously, frameworks of ethics play a role in the decision-making processes of children and youth even before these frameworks’ names are clearly stated or defined. In order to best serve this audience where their capabilities lie, joining cognitive development processes with ethical frameworks can best be applied by setting clear boundaries about what being a journalist means being responsible for.

Even when adults are assumed to be the sole type of audience member, the argument and history between social freedom and social responsibility cause controversy from within the journalism community. This struggle reflects one that many parents go through as well, when reading news about psychological research that leans on one side or the other on the same argument: when left to their own devices, will people tend to do what’s right, or try to get away with what’s wrong (Siebert, 1956)? Based on this specific psychological research, the answer differs depending on age groups and other individual factors.

On the road to contributory citizenship at age 18 in the United States, autonomy in the marketplace of ideas must eventually be assumed as the end goal (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007). One “main ethical road” to reaching a fixed concept of an end goal includes deontological ethics, defined by its attachment to duty and rules (Merrill, 1997). This ethical guideline allows for guidance to be conceived beforehand, possibly far prior to any form of conflict arising, for the sake of preparation and streamlining the journalistic process. On the other side of the same coin, teleological ethics “look to the ‘end’ (telos), consider the consequences, and speculate about the end results of their actions” (Merrill, p. 66). As a product of the enlightenment, teleology uses the scientific method to predict future outcomes of current action. Utilizing both these ethical frameworks, a balance can be reached between social responsibility and libertarianism in order to find the best framework for general statements of communication between a youth demographic and journalism itself.

Given the fact that many stages exist in psychological growth, this guideline is segmented, while generalized. The wide net of this concept keeps in mind the many facets of journalism and the different fields it holds within itself; from broad, global news to individually niche time-sensitive nonfiction content, reporting has different priorities at different levels while maintaining a universal goal of truth.

Beginning with UNICEF’s handbook for journalists (2007), children have the right to do these things as they so choose:

“• express opinions, especially about decisions affecting them;

• freedom of thought, expression, conscience and religion;

• a private life and the right to play;

• form their own clubs and organisations;

• access information — particularly from the state and media;

• make ideas and information known themselves” (p. 5).

This applies to children all over the world regardless of country status, according to their Convention on the Rights of the Child. Because of this emphasis on autonomy and media access, the UNICEF community makes it clear in this handbook that clear media representation is helpful and encouraged to meet that end, which includes the right to publicly and fairly express one’s own voice in the marketplace of ideas (2007).

As for specific age groups, a few general lines were drawn in the sands of time from this psychological research: about age 7, about age 12, about age 18 and about age 25. Again, these mile-markers differ from person to person, but research and current scientific advancement points to these concepts as signifiers of journalistic audience ability.

For children under 7: These audience members think concretely based largely on firsthand experience, so many current events may not reach their full journalistic potential unless the event was directly seen. In most cases, it may be best to wait.

For children between 7 and 12: These audience members understand the reality of the world outside of firsthand experience. Their ethics are largely based on heteronomous morality, which perceives a binary between right and wrong. These audience members will understand stories that have a clearly defined cause to an exclusive problem or solution.

For youth between 12 and 18: These audience members understand concepts of gray morality, and can use inferences to determine and extrapolate problems and solutions in the hypothetical. The formal operational stage allows for acceptance of mistakes in others, although the mistakes’ effects may cause instances of personally experienced disorder.

For adults between 18 and 25: These audience members understand the importance of their own autonomy, and are learning what relations look like between their sense of self versus their sense of others. They can understand most news stories, and will seek out ways to make the information relevant to their own growth and self-perceived wellbeing.

For adults over 25: By psychological standards, these audience members have fully developed brains on par with the rest of the news’ audience.

Utilization of the scientific method made this endeavor possible, coupled with the pursuit of ethical frameworks and acceptance of variations between audience members. Clearly defined lines and blanket statements that apply to every single audience member are ultimately impossible to completely fulfill, as with any dividing lines of a demographic’s character; but the time-honored reasoning of developmental psychology provides a sharper image of what is and is not appropriate for youth of different ages to accept and be informed from. The result is a general statement that encompasses individual facts that may be subject to change with more research in the future, all covering a foundation of journalistic truth. The truth and its principles have “ebbed and flowed over time, but they have always in some manner been evident. They have survived because journalists have been able to adapt the principles and demands of new platforms and ways of doing their basic work of informing the people” (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2007, p.5).The truth of journalism underlies every field that a journalist, reporter or storyteller steps into, eventually, according to Kovach & Rosenstiel (2007): “to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing. To fulfill this task, its first loyalty is to citizens” (p. 5). According to this evidence, it is possible to invite children and youth into eventual self-governance too.

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