The other week I started a Facebook group for folks interested in discussing "how to protect children from commercialism in a digital age." There are now 63 members and some interesting posts on the discussion board. I'm not sure how effective Facebook is for facilitating a real working group, but it's nice to see who is interested in this issue. I'm hopeful that some of the major stakeholders will use the Facebook group as a jumping off point to try and organize an actual coalition of people interested in drafting some potential recommendations.

I have been asked to write my next BusinessWeek.com OpEd column on this issue, so I'm talking to different folks, reading up on all of the various efforts (both regulatory and voluntary), and attempting to pull together my own thoughts on this topic. Michael Levine, PhD, the executive director of Sesame Workshop's new Joan Ganz Cooney Center, graciously shared his thoughts on the topic with me, and I thought they were so well articulated, I wanted to share them with you -- these were sent to me in an email (and also posted on the Facebook discussion board with Michael's permission).

As Y Pulse so often points out, digital media have become a huge influence in families lives -- in less time than the age of an elementary school child I should point out -- and we haven't quite decided whether they are a welcome guest, trusted relative, educational and social ally, commercial drain, perverse and harmful distraction or some of each. This great ambivalence is naturally unsettling for most people with kids and sector leaders have not come close to stimulating the type of public conversation we need to have on the media's potential and pratfalls. This is harder because everyone fancies themselves an "expert" on these issues. So it is especially difficult to get a clear positions framed around any policy or industry prescriptions for that which we have scant consensus about (how much to consume and when, safety, health promotion and kid activity levels, communication among generations often divided, not to mention the educational or social benefit). What is settled is that the newest media are a tremendous positive boon to commerce and here to stay.

I would like to see more honesty and transparency in the conversation from advocates, government and the business sectors. Like many other issues the digital media for kids is often presented in the public theater as a "wedge" between those interested in "protecting kids from harm or aimless activity" and those who believe that they are either an "expression of free speech and commerce" or "have great hidden benefits soon to be discovered." These contenders are, no doubt, right on some of the merits of their arguments, but the meaty issues are caught up in the "mean between two vices", that is finding where the dig media can enlighten, engage and enthrall more often and how to encourage all of that in a culture that is perfectly comfortable with their children spending a good deal of time on undirected play (in contrast to many Asian cultures today)

So --for a business discussion, one of the things I am most concerned about today is how can we change the conversation to be more intentional on the potential that we are missing to harness the digital media to promote kids experimentation with creativity, innovation, and learning, as opposed to the typical discussions you usually hear about the content.

On the educational standards issues -- my opinion is that industry and government should try and lead on this by setting up more voluntary groups to promote what researchers are saying about the potential of dig media to enlighten and steer kids towards 21st century skills, and that these groups should also take an interest, especially in the current recession, in investment in r and d (perhaps using the proceeds from the digital spectrum auction set to begin next week) to invent a new Corporation for Digital Learning or a Digital Media Innovation Fund that would expand research, increase incentives for quality media production, and help educate all parents and kids about the necessity and potential of being "media literate."

Michael's thoughts are especially relevant given today's NPD research on "Kids and Digital Content." AdAge.com, reg. required, looks at the impact of kids getting iPods or other MP3 players in elementary school, and the New York Times, reg. required, shows other highlights from the research, i.e. games are the most popular digital media for kids ages 2-14.

Posted by anastasia