ABSTRACT
As we know from our own experiences, children and even teens have different perceptions of mass media and use media differently than adults. The changes a child goes through in growing up are the same for children at certain ages. For example, all preschool-age children have characteristics in common based on their lack of experience with the media. At first, like Dolores who began this book, preschoolers tend to learn by stereotyping as Dolores did in her recollection of the delivery men as Presidents Nixon and Eisenhower. Like Dolores, preschoolers have little experience with life, including mass media, and may be frightened or confused in trying to discern what is real. We can view the mass media theory we examined in chapter 1 such as social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) with the variable of the child at different ages: “(Children) are seeing, and trying to interpret the adult world through children’s eyes and with children’s cognitive capacities” (Van Evra, 1998, p. 45). Not only do child and teen perceptions differ from adult perceptions, but they differ by developmental age as well.
