Rideout, V. J., Foehr, U. G., Roberts, D. F. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds.

Retrieved from Kaiser Family Foundation Website: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8010.pdf

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This report, published by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, compiles 5 years of quantitative data collected from 2004-2009 regarding children and adolescent’s media habits and usage. The report encompasses and compares two previously conducted studies from 1999 and 2004, and includes data from a national sample of 2,000 young people, making it a uniquely authoritative, insightful media study. The report shows dramatic increases of media usage, and media multitasking among the participants, with often an exponential growth between this latest iteration, and the earlier reports. The data is largely ungendered so there is little specific data about the average media consumption of young boys, but this report is still a precise indication of mean usage. With insight from Schulte, et al. (2009), Strasburger, et al. (2014), Pomerance & Gateward (2005), and more, the effects of media can be identified, and the corresponding effects on boys can be extrapolated and addressed. In a field where it is often difficult to find significant data, this report gives a workable foundation for both discussion, and protective measures.

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Pomerance, M., & Gateward, F. (Eds.). (2005). Where the Boys are:

Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth. ISBN 9780814331156

This book, a collection of essays from a variety of academic writers, and edited by professors from Ryerson University and the University of Illinois, explores the nature and depiction of boyhood and masculinity in cinema. Essays examine historical archetypes of boyhood, how boys establish self-images, identities, and connect with other boys through love or affiliation, and how boys are aligned with peoples, ideas, and situations in their depictions on-screen. The book’s scope extends beyond the simplistic impressions of male characters as being instruments for violence, anger, disconnection, victims of comedy, or the sanitized other in relationships to address the further complexities that exist within masculinity and the male experience.

The book covers many different topics, and is an invaluable resource for examining both the positive and negative portrayals that young boys are exposed to on the big screen, and, by extension, through the media. This volume provides a rare, sensitive view of what it means to grow up with male-centric media, neither endorsing nor condemning the process of transformation that occurs by the imparting of archetypal, hyper-masculine characters, but instead offering a nuanced, long-term comprehensive academic view of the issue, and the respective consequences.

 

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Schulte, M. T., Ramo, D., & Brown, S. A. (2009). Gender Differences in Factors Influencing Alcohol Use and

Drinking Progression Among Adolescents. Clinical Psychology Review, 29, 535-547. DOI 10.1016/j.cpr.2009.06.003

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This article, authored by a trio of clinical psychologists from the University of California, examines the emergence of a stark disparity between late adolescent boys’ and girls’ problematic drinking. The authors, adopting a developmental perspective, review a series of literature that covers biological, psychosocial, physiological, and social differences between male and female teenagers; to address a situation where younger teen boys and girls drink a similar amount, yet a massively disproportionate number of men abuse alcohol versus women.

In their results, they identify several factors as being the cause, with exposure to hyper-masculine media as being a central foundation. Adolescent males view content that lionizes alcohol, as is discussed by Strasburger, et al. (2014) in their chapter on alcohol, and become increasingly immersed in destructive drinking habits and behavior. The authors suggest interventions, at both a parental and educational level, must occur to correct these burgeoning, media-led impulses, and that there must be greater consistency in the treatment, prevention, and perception of underage drinking across genders.

This is an important article for discussions about the dangers of hyper-masculine attitudes and media. In this contrast between the genders, and the high rates of problem drinking, a tangible effect and warning can be found to identify how media can affect developing youths.

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Strasburger, V. C., Wilson, B. J., & Jordan, A. B. (2014). Children, Adolescents, and the

Media (3rd Ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

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This book, written by authors from the University of New Mexico, the University of Illinois, and the University of Pennsylvania, addresses the state of the relationship between children, adolescents, and the media. Through a developmental approach, and utilizing significant amounts of research data, the authors cover a broad range of youth-related issues, exploring both the dangers and positives offered by the modern media environment for young users. Prominent issues, such as social media usage, physiological developments, and family approach to media consumption, are discussed by the authors to provide a clearer understanding of the current situation that children and young people are being exposed to, the role adults and corporate interests play in this exposure, and some of the enduring effects to development that media can cause. This book, while only briefly discussing the effects of media on perception of gender, still provides a vital oversight of the current state of the media, rates and types of media consumption, and the targeting that children undergo by both media creators and corporate interests.

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ter Bogt, T. F. M., Engels, R. C. M. E., Bogers, S., & Kloosterman, M. (2010). “Shake It Baby, Shake It”: Media Preferences,

Sexual Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Among Adolescents. Sex Roles, 63, 844-859. DOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9815-1

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This study, performed by researchers from University Utrecht and Radboud University in the Netherlands, sought to examine the relationship between three prominent media formats (TV, music styles, and the internet), and the attitudes and gender stereotypes held by adolescent Dutch students. The authors analyzed data from 480 adolescents, aged 13 to 16, and found that youths’ preference for certain media forms and formats had a bigger impact on their beliefs about gender, rather than pure exposure to media content.

The researchers found that frequent consumption of genres such as hip-hop and hard-house electronic music led both boys and girls to embrace gender stereotypes, whereas classical music listeners had a lower tendency to do so. In these gendered paradigms, women were sexually objectified and reduced to their attractiveness, and men were expected to be tough and mercurial. The researchers suggest that parents and caretakers need to be more cognizant of the content that their children are choosing to look at, and to be particularly conscious of the dangers of erotic content online. They found that the desire to do so was overwhelmingly undertaken by the surveyed boys, and those that did regularly had the most skewed perception of the roles of men and women. The results from this analysis offers a different perspective on the effects of consumption, suggesting that the choices young people make have just as much of an effect on their development as what they are doing.

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Ward, L. M., Merriwether, A., & Caruthers, A. (2006). Breasts Are for Men: Media, Masculinity Ideologies, and

Men’s Beliefs About Women’s Bodies. Sex Roles, 55, 703-714. DOI 10.1007/s11199-006-9125-9

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This analysis, conducted by a group of family psychologists, explores the effect of masculinity ideology (MI) on how men perceive women’s bodies beyond the act of sex, specifically the nature of femininity and maternity. The researchers conducted qualitative interviews with 656 undergraduate, college men, assessing their support for traditional gender roles and ideology, rate and scope of media consumption, and their perception of women’s reproductive body functions.

The authors found that, while they could find individual connections between MI and negative perceptions of breast feeding and child rearing, they could not definitively prove a further link between this perception and negative media representation of maternal women. Though they could not claim a direct causal link between the two elements, the results suggested that MI was strengthened by men’s media, with respondents who frequently consumed male-centric media being much more likely to view women’s bodies more simplistically, and through a paradigm of sexuality.

This study showcases the insidious nature of destructive, shared, hegemonic ideology, and how perceptions can be shifted by exposure to both media and radical elements within a society. If adult men are susceptible to influence, the potential impact on male children is likely magnitudes higher, particularly considering theoretical frameworks, specifically Bandura’s (2009) Social Cognitive Theory, which suggest a strong connection between how children develop, and the behavior they see around them.

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Ward, L. M., Vandenbosch, L., & Eggermont, S. (2015). The Impact of Men's Magazines on Adolescent

Boys' Objectification and Courtship Beliefs. Journal of Adolescence, 39, 49-58.

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This article, written by an international group of professors from the United States of America, Belgium, and the Netherlands, addresses the ways in which adolescent boys are impacted by their consumption of traditional men’s magazines. The research was comprised of a longitudinal study of 1,504 of 12- to 18-year-old boys, to examine the courtship cognitions, and perceptions of women of easily-influenced adolescents when being regularly exposed to male-targeted lifestyle, lad’s, and erotic magazines. The researchers found that the male respondents were more likely, after repeatedly being exposed to these magazines, to misinterpret sexual signals, causing them to perceive courtship as being less nuanced and women to be uniquely interested in them, to compare real women unflatteringly to those in magazines, harming both boys’ and girls’ wellbeing and damaging the chances for a constructive, long-term relationship, and, finally, causing increased discomfort about their own bodies, appearance anxiety, and less confidence in their potential romantic abilities.

This article paints a damning picture of the effect that media can have on developing minds and psyches, even relatively low-tech formats such as print magazines. The authors suggest that media literacy programs that address the objectification of women, which have been found to increase awareness and self-esteem among young women, could help boys escape from gender-stereotypical beliefs, and the accompanying psychic fallout. What this article makes clear is that media can have a dramatic effect on boys’ emotional and mental wellbeing, even if they are not the subject of the damaging material.

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Wohlwend, K. E. (2011). ‘Are You Guys Girls?’: Boys, Identity Texts, and Disney

Princess Play. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 12(1), 3-23. DOI 10.1177/1468798411416787

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This article, written by a play researcher from Indiana University, examines young children’s gender identity construction and contestation through Disney Princess play. As part of a three-year ethnographic study into kindergarten-level children, the author identified how children were exposed to expected gender roles, and, occasionally, subverted them. Children, through princess play, both endorsed and rebuked the traditional masculine and feminine qualities with which they were exposed to by the organization, marketing, and play groups. The author noted instances where boys would act in transgressive, overtly feminine manners, playing as favorite, female Disney characters, and the disparate reactions to these events by different peers: some with open derision and mocking, and some with non-judgmental acceptance. This article, and the accompanying insight, provides an important tool for parents who seek to undermine the narrow, damaging definitions of what it is to be a boy or a man. Similarly, it provides a clear warning as to the pervasiveness of gendered beliefs, and the effect of boy-girl marketing. The author noted, as Barnes (2012) did, that social groups can play a significant role in policing their peers’ differences, these restrictive attitudes emerging from external influences.