Children as Viewers 11.1 Television is an important part of the total culture in which the child is born, grows and develops into an adult.
Television is more than passive entertainment.
It is, in effect, a huge symbolic environment for many children, in which they find food for cognitive development at an early age and an orientation to the whole process of socialisation. For the first time in the history of our species, most of the stories told about people, aging, death, sex, companionship, sex roles, minorities and much more are told not by parents, schools, churches, or community elders, but by a group of distant producers who have something to sell. The roles they offer children are the products of complex globalised manufacturing and marketing systems. Children form one of the most important minorities traditionally given special attention by public service broadcasting. Programming needs to be especially sensitive to children's information processing capacities at various ages.