ABSTRACT

When the kids know more about ‘Mr Spliffy’ and ‘Big H’ than their teachers and 6-year-old Alex can challenge the executives more effectively than his journalist parent, many adults feel there is indeed a hole in the reality barrier. Changes in the ways in which children are addressed, by television, new media and even, it seems, clothing, date back at least to the mid-1950s, but have speeded up to such an extent during the 1990s that the phenomenon of contemporary childhood can appear completely new. As more satellite channels come on stream and electronic and digitially-based forms of entertainment are launched-interactive forms that are often mysterious to adults but eminently marketable to kids-the popular discourse claims that it is children who are skilled in the technologies of the future. ‘I’m the first cow on the inter-net,’ moos Morag, a shaggy Highland longhorn, as she gives out her personal e-mail number on BBC Saturday morning television. She straddles the cosy children’s world of puppets and friendly animals and a much more threatening landscape of a technologized future.