| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Livingstone observed that “children—as audiences for and users of new media—are distinctive because of the perennial social anxieties concerning children, childhood and youth” (2002, p. 5). She pointed out that “the combination of children, new media and social change commonly arouses particularly strong views” (p. 5). Parents and teachers profess to want to protect and provide for children, to give them both “roots and wings” as the expression goes. As we have learned to shield and guide these young developing minds around the traditional media, we now turn our attention to the new media that has been attracting their attention. Livingstone described the “moral panics” that develop “as each new medium is introduced which share similar hopes and fears—with the fears generally dominating the agenda” (p. 5).
Livingstone explained that, in earlier eras, “similar questions were asked about the introduction of video games…the VCR…and television before that, about radio, cinema and comics, and so on” (2002, p. 5). As each new medium is initiated, Drotner (1992) noted, a sort of “historical amnesia” develops. “Every new panic develops as if it were the first time such issues were debated in public, and yet the debates are similar” (p. 52). These debates lead to what she described as “historical incorporation,” that is, “the intense preoccupation with the latest media fad immediately relegates older media to the shadows of acceptance” (p. 52). Drotner conceded, though, that “panic discourses cannot be countered discursively…even in the face of commission reports and other evidence to the contrary…it is no good trying to prove irrationalities or logical flaws” (p. 60).