El Ch* Well, I think part of that can be explained best by
merging Piaget and Vygotsky; -I think piaget has it right with
regards to stages; there are general stages that children go
through - and i think Vygotsky has it right with the social
aspects of learning. Anyway, long story short, it seems that
around 6-8 years old, parents are no longer as important to
children as their peers are.... and sometimes teachers too. But
by this point, parents are more the roles they play; part
police, part teacher, part friend, part parent from the kids
point of view - whereas "pure friends" (friend-friends one might
say) have the greatest influence on interests and development.
That includes the constructed friends of TV, youtube, characters
in video games, pets, etc. And... well, that's where they're
going to learn about sex at that point. By the time they're
interested in the subject, their parental influence are already
much less but the wide range of friends is far more influential.
Does media affect the mind? Well, in my mother's day, comic
books were "works of the devil" but she still read and collected
them, even as preachers and polititians and scientists alike
cried "These are bad for your kids" But they weren't. [or
perhaps they *were* - I'd be curious for someone to do a
sociocultural study to find out the influence of comic books
from my mothers's generation compared to video games compared to
movies, tv shows - through the generations... and see what
influences they had (if any) on future behavior.
