Children and Television in India

In this article on children and television, George Plathottam analyses India's child audience, which he describes as impressionable - easy to influence, to manipulate, to please - as well as loyal, and often non-discerning. In size, the under-14 age group is 35 percent of India's 1.2 billion population. He characterises the rural/urban division as a digital divide. Children who live in urban areas are exposed to internet, cable television, and other modern media; those living in rural areas have little access to electronic media, which is a factor in characterising children's media habits.

Nonetheless, children constitute 40 percent of the television audience in India, but there is a scarcity of children's programming, despite more than 100 channels. Children's television programming, according to the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AIMC), is less than 5 percent of the total television programming schedule. Thus, according to the author, "When forming their own identities Indian children begin to see a world about adults through adult’s eyes. Children watch adult family dramas, often with their elders. While there is a learning process about family relationships, they also discover the family as a site for conflict, deceit, death, betrayals." As stated here, reasons for the absence of children's programming on television include lack of training, knowledge, resources, and community interest, as well as structural factors within media organisations.

According to this report, children admire superheroes and are drawn in by programming on real-life crime, as revealed by a study from the Development and Educational Communication Unit of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which showed that children displayed avid interest in real life crimes and were found to have a deep knowledge of forensic science and how criminals behave. This, suggests the author, contributes to a skewed set of values.

The author's recommendation is for further study of the effect of television on children, especially programming described as 'newstainment', characterised as a blend of reality and fiction that may border on the voyeuristic. The author calls for child-friendly programming as well as research, so that television may exert a positive influence by "promoting awareness about one’s and others’ culture, habitat, environment, language, music."