Media plays an important role in children’s mental and physical health. The current estimate is that on average, people are on media for 6-12 hours a day. Obviously this is playing an important role in shaping children’s lives and health. Choose three qualities: skills, behaviors, or values beneficial for a healthy child to have. Research these to see what the experts are saying about them. Define and evaluate each quality. Then choose ONE show, movie, book, series, social media page, etc. and evaluate this media based on these three qualities (the criteria). Is this specific media teaching or modeling these qualities? 

You will want to choose skills, behaviors, values, or qualities and the corresponding media appropriate for a specific age range. For teenagers, for example, Netflixs 13 Reasons Why caused a lot of controversy because of its depiction of suicide. For this series, you could discuss whether it taught the value of life, appropriate relationships, and language teenagers should be using. You would not use the same criteria and media for a toddler. As you are choosing the criteria, you should argue the value of these three qualities. Why are they important? Why these three over others? Proving the importance of the qualities/criteria should be the first part of the argument. This is the part of the paper that will require the most research. What do the experts say about the qualities? How do the experts, based on experiments and research, argue for importance of the quality? 

Also, the more specific the media, the better the argument, i.e., instead of choosing Facebook, choose a specific Facebook page; or instead of YouTube, a specific YouTube influencer, or instead of Instagram, choose one poster. We do not have space to fully discuss social media as a whole in just six pages nor can we appropriately evaluate an entire social media platform (such as YouTube) in just five-six pages. Choose a specific page, poster, or influencer if using social media. Papers that discuss social media as a whole or an entire platform-such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok- will not receive full credit. 

Part one of the paper will be discussing the qualities. What are they and why are they helpful for a healthy child? What you can find in research- qualities that a person should have to be healthy. This is the section that should have the most research. Why are these the three most important qualities? What do the experts say about the quality and why it is important in child development.  (See announcement “Examples of Qualities and Media Suggestions”) 

Part two of the paper is mostly your argument. You will write the evaluation of the media based on the three qualities you choose. This will mostly be your words with examples from the media to illustrate your evaluation. It is unlikely that you will find an article that does this evaluation for you. 

Clear writing, critical thinking, media evaluated based on the criteria, credible sources used and cited correctly.