Half a century of television in the lives of our children

Livingstone, Sonia ORCID: 0000-0002-3248-9862 (2009) Half a century of television in the lives of our children. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 625 (1). pp. 151-163. ISSN 0002-7162

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Abstract

The quintessential image of the television audience is of the family viewing at home—sitting together comfortably in front of the lively set. Accompanying this happy image is its negative—a child viewing alone while real life goes on elsewhere. This article reviews evidence over five decades regarding the changing place of television in children’s lives. It argues that, notwithstanding postwar trends that have significantly changed adolescence, the family home, and wider consumer society, there was time for the 1950s family experiment to spawn the 1960s and 1970s family television experiment, thereby shaping normative expectations—academic, policy, and popular—regarding television audiences for years to come. At the turn of the twenty-first century, we must recognize that it was the underlying long-term trend of individualization, and its associated trends of consumerism, globalization, and democratization, that, historically and now, more profoundly frame the place of television in the family.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://ann.sagepub.com/
Additional Information:	© 2009 American Academy of Political & Social Science
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Date Deposited:	04 Jul 2011 10:19
Last Modified:	17 Sep 2024 19:33
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/36987

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