Northwestern’s Ellen Wartella has a lifelong passion for kids and the media.
Words by Kelly Konrad / photography by Robin Subar
“The first step is to look at your own technology use in the house and see if you can reduce that… particularly when the kids come home from school…”
Wartella is director of Northwestern University’s Center on Media and Human Development and has spent her entire career in pursuit of understanding the relationship between children and the electronic world that surrounds them.
“I started doing research in this area as a graduate student,” she says. Originally intending to get her Master’s degree and become a community organizer, she was taking a research methods class and subsequently asked to serve as a research assistant on a study investigating how children use money and learn to buy. Knowing nothing about kids and media, she set out to learn everything she could and found herself hooked.
“I started taking classes in child psychology and I was sold.
I always wanted to do research that had an impact.”
Not a new fight
Debate surrounding a child’s digital diet has been around longer than the most popular mommy blogs. Wartella has been in the mix since the late 70s, when she first testified in front of the Federal Trade Commission on the topic of advertising directed at kids.
“I testified at the FTC about what we knew about how children of different ages make sense of advertising content and that got me hooked I realized I could do research with kids, which I like doing, that could address a whole host of policy questions.”
Policy questions that likely have been around for more than 100 years. Wartella points to the introduction of newspapers in the late 19th century, then the advent of film, radio, and television in the 20th century. “Every new media technology has entered our society with concerns about its likely impact on vulnerable audiences and children,” she says. “There are just so many questions about children and media that parents, caregivers, schools, and even policymakers have.”
Along the way, she’s been tapped to advise the heavyweights, including Sesame Workshop for the last 15 years. “I consult with a variety of children’s television shows and now am involved in digital online programming for kids.”
Balancing the digital diet
It is possible, Wartella notes, to get your kids’ noses out of their smartphones and computers, but you have to make an effort. “You have to work at it. Parents themselves shouldn’t be coming home using technology constantly and ignoring their children. Unfortunately, a lot of parents do that because they are equally caught up in it.”
There are steps parents can take to improve a child’s digital diet. “The first step is to look at your own technology use in the house and see if you can reduce that,” she says. “Particularly when the kids come home from school. If there’s a time I would recommend to try to reduce technology, it is when your son or daughter walks in the house from school.
If you are there, try to spend at least 15–20 minutes talking
to them about their day.”
Secondly, Wartella advises keeping the cell phones off the kitchen table. “Try not to have technology at the dinner table and during meals—that’s another opportunity to talk about what’s going on and to either talk about the day you’re expecting at breakfast or the day you’ve had—the day everyone has had.”
Last, but not least, keep the screens out of the bedroom. “There is a lot of evidence that having a television in the bedroom and allowing kids to use their texting into the night is really not very helpful, particularly with young children like preschoolers and young elementary school children,” she says. “Television in the bedroom is associated with less academic achievement in school.”
She knows it isn’t easy. “I think a lot of it has to do with parents that are stressed and trying to keep work going. If you can monitor your own media use while you are monitoring your children’s use you’ll have a better time with it.”
Is this amount of technology a game changer?
Wartella notes that even babies can find their way around iPads and mobile phones—the two technologies that really are game changers she says. But parents don’t have to demonize it just yet.
“What we know about the context in which children thrive and develop best is that they are well cared for, they have a loving adult that takes care of them, and they are engaged in activities that encourage their cognitive and social development,” she says. “Technology can be part of those activities but the more diverse the activities the healthier the child will be.”
And the future holds …
That’s the questions stuck in Wartella’s craw at the moment—the impact of this level of technology on the
next generation of adults. “What are the consequences of
this generation’s children growing up in a technologized world? There hasn’t been much speculation or research on what kind of adults we are raising today and that’s the one I’m intrigued by right now.”
If you would like to learn more, the Center on Media
and Human Development offers access to participate in
a variety of studies. You can learn more about their work
at cmhd.northwestern.edu.
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