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Ever since the regulation of children's television in the 1980s, marketing violence to children through the media has become increasingly prevalent. The violent programs themselves, as well as the toys, video games, and other products linked to them, glorify violence, undermine play, and portray racial stereotypes. While these practices harm all young children, they present a special risk for children of color because of how racial messages are linked to violence in the shows. This situation is especially worrisome for young children of color who are disproportionately represented among low-income children, consume more hours of media per day, and have many other risk factors undermining their healthy development.
Young children growing up today spend an enormous amount of time consuming media. Two- to seven-year-olds now average over three hours a day of "screen time" on such activities as watching TV and playing video games (Rideout, Foehr, Roberts, & Brodie, 1999). And when they are not sitting in front of a screen, children are often engaged in play with toys linked to the media (Carlsson-Paige & Levin, 1990). Over the last 20 years, children have increasingly become a consumer group to be marketed to through the media. Children see an average of 20,000 advertisements per year (Strasburger & Donnerstein, 1999). Beyond just advertisements, they are exposed to television shows, video and computer games, Hollywood movies, the Internet, and media-linked toys that market single themes through media cross-feeding and effectively become advertisements for each other (McChesney, 1999; Seabrook, 1997). This kind of marketing has successfully created a childhood media culture that touches almost all aspects of children's lives. While there are many reasons why this form of marketing can be harmful to children, the fact that violence has become a central focus of this marketing creates a special problem.
Much of the concern about how violence in entertainment media is affecting children can be traced back to the deregulation of children's television in 1984 by the Federal Communications Commission. With deregulation, it became legal to sell toys and other products linked to specific TV programs for the first time. As a result, the toy and television industries quickly joined together to develop toy-linked TV shows. Within one year of deregulation, 9 of the 10 best-selling toys...