Constructing the "Media Competent" Child: Media Literacy and Regulatory Policy in the UK

Abstract

Over the past fifteen years, sociologists have mounted an influential challenge to traditional psychological accounts of childhood. The new sociology of childhood has presented a powerful critique of the developmentalist view of children as merely ‹adults in the making›. Such a view, it is argued, judges children only in terms of what they will become in the future, once they have been adequately socialised: they are seen as inherently vulnerable, incomplete and dependent. This article considers how recent research on children and media relates to public policy, and specifically to current debates about media regulation in the UK. Debates about the media are obviously an important arena for contemporary concerns about childhood.