The Child and the Remote

Introduction

Children actively develop relationships with their parents, peers, teachers and their environment. The people, places and things in the child’s most intimate ecosystems afford many opportunities to develop and cultivate meaningful relationships. As interactive media continues to grow and more and more characters are speaking directly with children on their tablets and televisions, children begin developing dynamic and multidimensional relationships with the screens in their lives. This case study is committed to better understanding the relationship that children develop with the highly interactive educational television show Sesame Street.

While there is much discussion on the topic of children’s television viewing, this rhetoric generally ignores the continuation of the relationship when the television is turned off. Further, the research considers the child’s role in the relationship to simply be a passive recipient of media. The current case study acknowledges that a child is not simply viewing an arrangement of pixels on a piece of plastic in a vacuum. Instead, the child is engaging with a thoughtfully curated library of content sought out within the confines of a power filled relationship between them and their parents. The child is becoming familiar with the characters, responding to them as peers, and developing a relationship with television programs that allows them to blur the lines between their on-screen and off-screen worlds.

In most homes, a colorful and bulky remote control stands as a symbol for power in the decision to turn on the television and select a show to view. The person holding the device is in control of the content on the screen, the volume at which it is played, and the duration the content is shown. Beyond the obvious, the person holding the remote is responsible for designating a momentary hierarchical importance among the television and the competing stimuli in the environment. While a child’s agency to turn on the television is often restricted, their agency to identify with characters and develop a meaningful internal narrative that is sustained into their off-screen world demonstrates an alternative agency. It is this agency that produces the climate in which children can begin developing a healthy and intrinsically motivated relationship with the content on their screens.

Characters on children’s television shows are known to engage in interactive dialogue and content designed to socially engage children (Gray, Reardon & Kotler, 2017). This call and response is the most rudimentary sign of the formation of a relationship between a child and their television. It is in these moments of real time reaction that children begin to form their relationship with television. When a child sings along with a recurring song or enthusiastically waves to their favorite character as they would a friend at a bus stop, they are making the choice to engage in a seemingly bidirectional relationship with the characters and content of the television show. However, the development of an authentic relationship is one that is not restricted to the glass rectangle where the children are likely to meet the characters. Instead, the relationship includes a continuation of the mentally constructed and represented story lines of the characters that the children relate with most.

The imaginary worlds on screens provide low stakes opportunities for children to practice what they learned in their off-screen lives and mass production provides generalizable material that helps children make sense of their off-screen environments. At its core, this means that the mechanisms used to produce quality children’s television transform the shows into a uniquely relatable experience. Children engage with conflicts similar to the conflicts experienced by the characters in their shows and feel empathy when their colorful friends are sad. For example, while viewing a show, children might see a park similar to the one down the street from their house, but an unfamiliar friend in the park on the screen forces them to accommodate their scheme of who belongs in a park. A young child’s developmental blur between on-screen and off-screen realities produces an atmosphere perfect for engaging with creative self-development in a fashion that strongly resembles the way that children would engage in social interactions and self-exploration with their off-screen peers.

The current literature on this topic seeks to quantitatively define a restrictive cap of viewing time in an attempt to protect children from what is perceived as an inability to recognize what is best for themselves. While understanding the impact of the amount of time children spend watching television is important, this research shifts the question away from decisions exclusively about the quantity of children’s television viewing based on the agendas of adults and towards the understanding of the child as an active agent in their viewing. When young children have sufficient agency to engage with the media content they deem as most valuable, they will begin to cultivate a relationship that is capable of supporting their growth across domains in an exceptionally unique way. This case study uses a series of interviews and in-home observations to understand why and how children are watching Sesame Street and what impact their viewing has on their off-screen lives. This context driven case study will seek to answer the question: What is the relationship children form with the early childhood television show, Sesame Street?

Literature Review

The literature most relevant to the current study looks at three components of the formation of a relationship between a child and television shows such as Sesame Street. First, much of the literature reviewed below discusses the influential motivations behind introducing televisions into children’s lives. Second, this review discusses the current television viewing habits of children. Third, it describes the nature of a child’s relationship with television that allows them to blur the division between on-screen and off-screen worlds and generalize their experiences in both worlds across this blurred line.

Why are children watching television?

The role of a television in the lives of children is often mediated by the adults closest to them. There is a constellation of motivators that influence the ways that adults make the decisions to turn on the television, select content, and limit their children’s interactions with the two dimensional screen.

Before parents select content or decide how much content their children should be watching, they must first feel motivated, for one reason or another, to include television in their children’s lives. For example, 7 out of 10 parents report using television as a babysitter while they prepare meals (Beyens & Eggermont, 2014). The decision to turn on the television is rarely motivated by the potential benefits to the child. Instead, parents choose to use television because they believe it keeps children safely occupied, that co-viewing (described as watching TV together with another person (Nielson, 2014)) improves communication, and that the distractive nature of television regulates children’s behaviors (Evans, Jordan & Horner 2011). An alternatively strong motivation for allowing children to view television is the gatekeeping potential seen by parents. It is easy to control what children view and how often they view it which makes it an ideal form of occupation. However, throughout history, as television sets appeared in homes across the country, the role they played in households evolved to one of social standing. In response, families took either a socio-orientation stance on television characterized by control and utilizing televisions as a vital piece of communication to help children get along with everyone, or they took a concept orientated stance that was alternatively characterized by affection towards the idea that television stimulates children’s ideas and beliefs and should be used to transmit values (Lull, 1980).

Similarly, parental selection of content is also consistently used as a mediator intended to protect children from the perceived dangers of television. In selecting television content and reporting their motivations to allow their children to watch television, opportunities to learn consistently appear as a strong variable for selection. According to Rideout (2014), while only 5% of parents think that education does not belong in television because they see it existing strictly for entertainment purposes, the majority of parents have a desire towards educational television content that supports their child’s development. Often used as an example of educational television, 96% of parents reported that Sesame Street was very or somewhat educational (Rideout, 2014).

The general fear of television produced and echoed in each of the child’s ecosystems persuades parents to limit the amount of television their children are exposed to. According to Rideout (2014), 31% of parents reported believing that their children were engaged in too much viewing and would prefer to reduce the quantity of viewing. However, there are reported barriers to reducing the amount of television children watch. First, children self-reported that they would act in defiance if their screen time was restricted, suggesting that children see irreplaceable value in television. Second, parents reported that reductions in television would increase family conflict, supporting the idea that television plays a social role in homes. Third, because television is regularly used to babysit children, parents (especially low income parents) reported lacking the resources to employ alternative strategies to babysit their children (Evans et. al., 2011).

When observed, mediations to children’s television viewing fall into two categories: time based restrictions and program based restrictions. When children’s programs were restricted, parental attitudes towards their children watching television increased. In addition, when either program restrictions or time restrictions were in place, the frequency of viewing was higher than when children viewed without restriction (Vandewater, Park, Huang & Wartella, 2005).

While research supports that most children today are watching television as a distractive parenting tool, parents prefer that the content their children are watching is interactive and educational. Children are overwhelmingly watching parent-approved television at the request of their parents so that they can eat, work, or rest in solitude. Any relationship that the child will form with the characters and content of a television show is regularly constructed within the confines of the requests of the child’s parents.

How are children watching television?

Preschool age children spend more time with television than with any other screen or multimedia in their life (Rideout, 2014). Fundamental to this research are two phenomena that occur while a child is actively viewing television. The first is the development of parasocial relationships with characters described by Jennings and Alper (2016) as relationships that appear to be authentic to the child even though the character on the television is unaware of the child’s existence. The second phenomenon is the development of the child’s ability to discern between real and pretend actions on screen (Rideout, 2014).

From an early age, children are able to discern between characters they relate to and those that they do not by forming positive parasocial relationships (PPSR) and negative parasocial relationships (NPSR), respectively (Jennings & Alper, 2016). Children seek out these relationships using moral, social and physical attributes as measurements of social value and relatability, very similar to the way that they identify friends in their off-screen environments (Kotler, Schiffman & Hanson, 2012). Further, when children talk about their parasocial relationships with characters on television, they use the same language and vocabulary they use to describe their off-screen peers (Jennings & Alper, 2016), suggesting a very blurry differentiating line between their perception of parasocial and off-screen relationships.

In these parasocial relationships, that mimic learning relationships traditionally formed with off-screen peers, teachers, and parents, children are able to discriminate between reliable and nonreliable sources of information in pursuit of verifying unobserved truths (Richert, Robb & Smith, 2011). Children then use the combination of reliability and relatability to identify ideal parasocial partners in their relationships which they are then more likely to engage with and learn from.

Kotler et. al. (2012) acknowledge that in the creation and utilization of these parasocial relationships, children are engaging in the basic principles of Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory used to describe off-screen relationships. Bandura’s theory posits that children acquire new knowledge alongside peers through the processes of social interaction, imitation and modeling. The parallel between on-screen and off-screen social learning continues to support the idea that the line between parasocial (or on-screen) and off-screen relationships is blurry in the minds of children.

During the developmental period between children’s third and fifth birthdays, they are developing the ability to distinguish between real and pretend occurrences in television shows. Further, as children develop this skill, they begin to claim that the pretend actions in television shows cannot happen in the off-screen world (Richert et. al., 2011). However, the same study explains that the authenticity of the parasocial relationships that children form with the reliable and relatable characters of Sesame Street makes it an exception to the rule. Five-year-olds who would regularly claim that pretend actions seen on TV cannot occur in the off-screen world, do claim that the “pretend” actions they see on Sesame Street are likely to occur off-screen (Richert et. al., 2011), thereby emphasizing the show’s success to promote reliable and relatable characters.

A Generalizable Impact

Today, the parasocial relationships children develop with characters over a series of 30 minute blocks are not confined to screens. These relationships expand through their homes, their play settings, and their educational settings and have residual effects that follow children through their development. Piotrowski, Jennings, and Linebarger (2013) name the bridging of the gap between on-screen and off-screen worlds, traditionally instigated by a peer or adult, as experiential mediation.

The cultivation of parasocial relationships with characters in children’s television shows informs the decisions children make about the apps, books, and toys they decide to include in their lives. Children above the age of five reported searching for transmedia content (apps, e-books, internet videos, etc.) based on the TV shows that they prefer to watch (Jennings & Alper, 2016). Further, when asked about the last book that their child read, most often parents reported the book was related to a television show (Jordan, 2005). Additionally, in her exploration of the role of television in eating habits, Kotler et. al. (2012) describe that children show a significant preference for food that is connected to or branded by a television show with which they have developed a parasocial relationship. Finally, children use the observed experiences and strategies of television characters in their imaginary worlds to resolve their own personal conflicts. Further, while watching television, children construct and manipulate symbolic narratives of television to produce internal scripts which regularly become the settings of the child’s play (Cuervo, Burgos, & Ángel, 2013). When asked, 78% of parents reported that their children engaged with the content of television shows in their imaginative play (Rideout, 2014). These examples expand the potential web of influence of television programs and suggest that a parasocial relationship fundamentally influences many domains of the lives of children.

Children’s parasocial relationships with characters have many residual effects. Fifty-four percent of parents reported seeing residual effects of educational television on their children. More specifically, 57% of parents said that their child learned and used many new cognitive skills, reading skills, vocabulary words, and/or math content (Rideout, 2014). Most relevant, the social nature of Sesame Street combined with the frequency and duration at which three-year-olds watch the show strongly predicts their vocabulary scores at age five independent of several confounding variables (Richert et. al., 2011). This prediction is one that can uniquely be claimed by Sesame Street which many (Jennings & Alper 2016, Richert et. al. 2011, Kotler et. al. 2012) would attribute to the depth and reality of the parasocial relationships children form with the reliable and relatable cast. Richert et. al.’s (2011) recognition of the unique potential of Sesame Street to generalize to the child’s off-screen world suggests that the television show has an intrinsic experiential mediation that fulfills the role often fulfilled by off-screen peers.

Television Viewing

The most recent Nielson (2015) report that looks at the viewing habits of children recognizes a few significant patterns. First, traditional and live television is the preferred viewing method for children. Second, 97% of kids between the ages of 2 and 7 years reported watching television or on-demand programming. Eighty-nine percent of children ages 2 to 4 years and 90% of children ages 5 to 7 years reported watching children’s weekly programming (the category in which Sesame Street falls). Third, the report describes that 75% of children 2 to 4 years and 68% of children 5 to 7 years co-viewed television with another person, the majority of whom reported co-viewing within the category of “children’s weekly programming”. Finally, there is a very slight trend away from television as the primary method of media consumption across demographics.

Sesame Street

Parental recognition of the educational capacity of children sprang from a movement in education in the 1960s and 1970s that sought to utilize the amenities available to low income families (televisions) to augment learning in the classroom. What started as classroom lessons based off of the week’s regularly scheduled television shows, would evolve to an entire lineup of television programs dedicated to supporting children’s educational development. In 1969, Sesame Street – the longest lasting example – was created to close the learning gap and break cultural barriers to provide a national discussion (Cain, 2017). Now airing on both PBS and HBO, the television show uses a colorful cast of muppets (the iconic style of puppet designed by Jim Henson) as well as a diverse and representative cast of humans to engage children in a series of short segments intended to help children grow smarter, stronger, and kinder (Davis, 2008).

The literature presented here describes why and how families introduce television into their children’s lives. On the surface, it begins to explain the importance of reliable and relatable content and characters. In addition, it positions Sesame Street as a television program with immense potential to cultivate parasocial relationships. This body of research provides a platform for this case study. The following evidence begins to dive deeper into the impact and process of forming parasocial relationships between two children and Sesame Street.

Methods

With a phenomenological understanding of the worlds of children, this case study utilized in-depth interviews with one set of parents and direct and participant observations of their children, conducted while their children watched Sesame Street in their home. The combination of parent interviews and child observations provides a deeper description of the presence of the relationship children form with the characters and content of the television show Sesame Street. The procedures of this study were reviewed and approved by the IRB at University of Pennsylvania with the oversight of Dr. Annette Lareau as the principal investigator.

Participants

This case study analyzed the Clarke-Vandstone family, a White middle class family. Cam and Diane (both in their early 30’s) are the parents of two boys – Peter (4.5 years old) and Tanner (6 years old). The family lives in a renovated brownstone home on a gentrified block in a previously poor neighborhood. The family was selected for this case study because they had recently begun watching Sesame Street regularly. This meant that the children were in the early stages of developing a relationship with the television show. Below are brief descriptions of each member of the household.

Peter (4.5 years old): Peter attends a private and sought after preschool near their home. His emotionally expressive face is almost always filled with energy. He admires his older brother and values his love and attention. Peter is of few words and comically communicates mostly with facial expressions and physical actions. Each observation or interview is regularly accompanied by a bout of high energy, with Peter sprinting from one end of the house to the next.

Tanner (6.5 years old): Tanner attends a competitive public school that is the reason for the family living in the neighborhood that they do. Tanner is almost always smiling. Even when he shows signs of anxiety or stress, he still smiles through it. He can focus intellectually for hours on a single task. He demonstrates strong emotional intelligence and is drawn towards caring for his younger brother. He thinks and problem solves out loud which provided rich data for this study.

Diane: Diane is the mother of the two boys. She is a young mother and a graduate student at a prestigious university. During many observations, I would arrive early in the home and would find her studying under a lamp in the morning darkness. She demonstrates pride in being well put together. In interviews, her appearance and posture is always impeccable and it is evident that she dedicates energy to craft her words. During observations in her home, she is significantly more informal.

Cam: Cam is the gentle father of the boys. My interactions with him were limited to two observations. In these observations, he was quiet but always had a presence in the home.

Access

Diane Clarke-Vandstone responded to a post on a social media site that requested the participation of parents whose children regularly watch Sesame Street. In our digital correspondence, the study was described as being conducted in two parts, parent interviews and child observations, starting with the parent interview. She identified and secured an interview location and during the interview we discussed and agreed on an observation strategy. Tanner and Peter watched Sesame Street at 6:00am and Diane and I decided to introduce the project to the boys at a more convenient hour. The following week, I was invited to meet the children and spent 45 minutes with them during which time I explained that I would be watching Sesame Street with them in the mornings. The subsequent six observations took place at 6:00am in their home where I sat on the couch next to the children in their living room and took notes. Each visit, the children became more comfortable with me and I became less of an alien in their morning routine.

Procedures

The interviews with Diane were conducted both in public settings and in the Clarke-Vandstone home. The purpose of the interviews was twofold: (1) to describe the way her children consume television and (2) to discuss the decision making process she uses to decide whether or not to allow or restrict her children’s viewing opportunities. These interviews were digitally recorded, masked for confidentiality, and transcribed. After transcription, the interview recording was destroyed to further mask the identity of the participating family.

The observations were conducted in unaltered settings (with the exceptional addition of an observer). All observations were done during the time and in a place where the children traditionally watch Sesame Street. In addition, they were encouraged to watch on the device (television, laptop, tablet, etc.) that they normally view on. For this case study, this meant that the observations generally took place in the family’s living room on the large sectional sofa. The only exceptions occurred when the children wanted to show me something in another part of the house or when they were engaged in distracted viewing and would go back and forth between viewing and playing. During the observations, the researcher took field notes with a handwritten notebook without names or proper nouns to protect identities. After the collection of data, all responses were coded and grouped on the themes of parent motivation, lesson utility, real time viewing response, and child’s control in viewing.

Challenges

The holistic data collection method inclusive of both interviews and observations further provided momentary detail of the phenomena over time. This procedure allowed this case study to provide a complimentary description of meaning to the field of research generally dedicated to quantitative understanding. There is an abundance of knowledge that analyzes and compares viewing habits of populations of children, however there is significant lack of research that shines a light on the impact of viewing on individual families. It was important to the validity of this study that the research not impede the routine of the participants. The Clarke-Vandstone family did not set alarms to wake their children up, so there were several mornings when I would arrive and the children slept through observation. To accommodate, we rescheduled observations.

While it may seem reductionist to observe only Sesame Street (as opposed to any number of other children’s television shows), the focus on a single show allowed me much more freedom to identify trends in relationship forming as the literature reviewed suggests that Sesame Street has the most potential to produce an observable relationship between the child and the television program.

Researcher

As the primary field researcher, I am a 25-year-old White cisgender male with a bachelor’s degree in Children’s Studies. In addition, I am completing a dual master’s degree in International Educational Development and Human Development. In both academic and professional capacities, I have engaged with the national and international work of Sesame Workshop (the nonprofit behind Sesame Street).

Findings

Why are children watching?

For a child to be able to begin forming a meaningful relationship with television shows like Sesame Street, they must first energetically careen through the wall of pressure built by parents and society that overwhelmingly works to restrict their screen-based interactions. While the literature clearly discusses a wide variety of motivations for families to turn on, select, and limit television, this study identified four primary motivators. Most frequently referenced as a motivator was the pressure that the parents felt from society to restrict the duration of viewing and control the content that their children are exposed to.

When Diane was asked what her children watched the morning of our interview, she was visibly filled with guilt as she was unable to answer. She knew that her children had sat in front of the television, but was unable to recall what they were watching. For Diane, she explained that this reflected negatively on her parenting because she felt as though this is something that she should know about her children.

In selecting content, Diane referenced language as a motivator both at the literal level of language spoken, and the style of conversations used to support development. As Diane reflects about choosing content for her two boys, she claims language as a motivator. Several times, she mentions that emotions are intentionally present in their household – especially with her oldest son Tanner who, at six years old, is very attuned to his own emotions.

“Umm language. Umm emotion. Like that they are seeing people who express emotion and who have feelings. Umm. Limited conflict, but I know that shows are based in resolving conflict but at least limited conflict or clarity in what that conflict is. And then engaging and entertaining.”

For Diane, language and emotion came first in response to a question about the characteristics she uses to identify good content for her children. She was conflicted over the role of conflict and included entertainment as a trailing characteristic at the end of her response.

As the reviewed literature explains, an overwhelming number of parents engage television in the lives of their children as it provides a distraction while the parents cook, rest, or engage in any other activity assumed to be easier without the presence of children. It was not long into the discussion before Diane began describing the television as a safe place that is intended to occupy her children. Even in making the decision, suppressing emotions and guilt, she explains that she didn’t have much of a choice in including television in their lives.

“It wasn’t a decision; it was just sort of a ‘this works because they are occupied’. Umm it also… when they would get up really early it would give us extra time to just lounge and sleep.”

Interestingly, for Diane, as the children got older the television would evolve into a much more active decision to entertain and occupy. A very astute parent tuned into the systems of public education, Diane knew that her sons’ first day at school would mark a transition to a much busier life filled with structure and rigidity. In response, they strongly restricted the time their children spent in the corner of their ornate wood-accented living room watching television. Instead, they shifted the focus to supplement the lack of play they would experience at school and with it, the children shifted from the TV corner to the middle of the living room where they would build forts stabilized by pristine hard wood floors, and read and wrestle in front of the marble fireplace.

“…as soon as Tanner started Kindergarten and started learning and stopped playing, that was the shift and I said ‘okay that is over’ so I just use certain tools for certain experiences. And television for me was always just entertainment and occupy.”

In a near perfect reflection of the literature, this study found very few examples of overt motivations of children to freely turn on, select, and restrict television. However, in the home there were two presentations of children in control of viewing habits.

The first example presented itself in an interview with Diane. As she winds her way through explaining how and why her children watch television, she begins to explain her trust in her children’s ability to identify appropriate content.

“In the morning, they put on whatever they want on TV, they know what they, they know their choices. So they basically put it on… we have OnDemand, so the its color coded. So the cartoons come in, in I think like a light blue when you go through the guide so (Tanner) knows that any of the light blue and now he can read it. So as soon as he started to be able to read which was about a year ago. He can then pick the shows and he actually will usually conference with Peter about what to put on.”

In the first presentation of what seems to be complete child control, Diane explains that she trusts her children to choose appropriate content. However, the system that she uses to identify the content is created and instituted by the television provider. She makes it seem as though she has had several conversations with Tanner about appropriate colors to click on and the others should not be watched, especially alone. This presentation demonstrates the complexity of control. While it is true that Tanner and Peter were able to freely wander downstairs alone and they were able to turn the TV on to select a show to watch, they were still buffered by a layer of controls.

The second presentation of control happens when Tanner and Peter were coviewing and Sesame Street had just ended. Diane was still not finished getting ready but the children were used to the end credits signifying the end of TV and the beginning of breakfast. Instead of following the routine, the older brother Tanner grabs the remote to change the channel. Peter (the 4.5-year- old), who is still half asleep and barely focused on the television show, let’s out a very loud grumble when Tanner opens the guide which minimizes Cat in the Hat. Tanner scrolls through the guide to see what other options exist at the moment and finds Ready Jet Go on a different channel. Tanner asks his brother what he would like to watch. Unsatisfied with his guttural mumble “Cat in the Hat”, Tanner suggests Ready Jet Go but tells Peter that he will not select a show that Peter doesn’t like. Frustrated with his brother’s lack of effort in the decision, Tanner asks at this point for simply a yes or no answer. Peter, who has almost fallen back asleep upside down on the couch with his legs extending up the back of the sofa, finally utters yes. Tanner presses okay on Ready Jet Go and they watch for just a few moments before breakfast and they run to the table. In this instance, the two boys are motivated to select a new show almost explicitly by the social nature of coviewing. The boys took control of their viewing and, in this moment, acted against the household routine in favor of viewing more content.

Diane twice mentions a desire to know more about what her children are watching on television. In the first discussion, she compares the content of television shows to Tanner and Peter’s academic setting.

“I trust his academic setting now where as I wouldn’t have necessarily known the TV content or how or what was being taught.”

In this moment, she explains that she would like to know more about the content of the television shows that they are watching because she has less trust for them then she has for the content provided in academic settings.

In a separate conversation, Diane and I sit on the couch waiting for the boys to wake up and tumble down the stairs. When I ask her about the shows that the boys watch when I am not around, she again has a hard time coming up with a concrete answer. She explains that she uses television in the mornings to occupy the boys while she gets ready. However, she seems troubled and defeated as she explains her desire to know more about what the boys are watching.

“I wish I knew more about what they were watching only from the standpoint of I like to be able to talk to them about what they are seeing on TV.”

Diane is an academic who is interested in the ways that her children engage in emotionally sensitive content. These two examples show her struggle with building trust of television content. With minimal hesitation, she admits trust of the schools the boys attend. Yet, she continues to be hesitant about forming trust towards the television shows that the boys watch. When parents lack trust of a child’s friend, they hesitate to give the child permission to spend time with that friend. The same seems to be true for Diane and her boys watching television. She is hesitant to permit open access to television channels, the time the boys spend watching television is restricted, and the decision to let children spend time with the television is one riddled with moral strife.

Diane mentions an off-screen friend of the boys that watches a lot of television. As she describes him, she carefully constructs her conversation to ensure that the friend is not painted in a bad light. When I asked how she moderates the way the boys interact with this friend, she describes the restrictions the boys have.

“We try to limit that if they are going to play with that friend they are going to play outside. ‘Cause I don’t want him going to other kids houses and watching TV because I don’t know what they are watching because his friend does all of the controlling.”

The restrictions Diane places on limiting the household TV viewing habits are not unlike the restrictions placed on the interactions children have with their off-screen peers. In this moment, she references her present trust in her children’s abilities to discern and make good content choices.

How are children watching?

Tanner grabs the big grey remote with colorful buttons that is sitting on the black leather couch between him and his brother, Peter. He points it at the dated grey Television, presses the wrong button and says “Why did I do that?” Then he takes a deep breath and rolls back into the couch with his hand on his head and waits for the TV to turn on. It is 5:58am and when the television finally comes to life, a basketball game is on. Tanner explains that he is waiting for it to come on at 6:00am. He opens the guide and starts scrolling “By the time I find it, it should be 6:00”. By the time Sesame Street showed up on the guide, it was only 5:59am. Tanner scrolled past it the first time and then stopped to go back to where he thought it should be. With the press of a button, Tanner closes the guide and Sesame Street is now playing full screen on the television in the living room while mom takes a shower and dad is in the kitchen.

The web of societal, parental, and self-motivations has led us to this moment. The children are engaged with Sesame Street. During this routinely viewed 30-minute block, the two boys participate in three phenomena that are relevant to the development of a meaningful relationship with the television show.

First, the boys are consistently engaged in episodes of distracted co-viewing. While they sit, stand, and squirm on the black leather couch next to each other, each of them phases in an out of focus as they shift focus from the television to conversations with each other and off-screen projects and then shift back. During one observation an ornate “ice-ship” built out of Legos was the source of Peter’s distractions. With a square platform and rudimentary pillars that reached for the sky, it could only have been the product of a child’s imagination. He began disassembling and reassembling it until he was satisfied enough to return his attention to the television. A burst of energy in the form of the physical agitation towards his brother sent the ice ship crashing to its doom on the warm hard wood floors. “You just destroyed your ship” Tanner said with a look of vengeance hoping that this action would teach Peter to stop wrestling with him. Peter looked down. Defeated, his body melted into Tanner’s side as he buried his face in the couch. Without missing a beat, Tanner lost his vengeful look, broke focus from the television to provide comfort, and assured Peter “It’s okay, I will build you another one.” Peter picked his head up slowly and muttered “right now?” and Tanner said “not right now, I am watching Sesame Street”. Peter ended the event by resting his head on Tanner’s side and looking at the television alongside as brother as the shattered Ice Ship lay quietly at the base of the couch.

This particular episode of Sesame Street was on for a total of 30 minutes from start to finish. Tanner remained focused on Sesame Street for the duration with only a few short breaks (usually to comfort his brother). Peter on the other hand was almost the exact opposite during the show. He was focused on first building an ice ship and second wrestling with his brother, but occasionally would break focus to watch the television. The ebb and flow of distractions coupled with the shared nature of co-viewing created a social environment in which the cultivation of any relationship could thrive be it with on-screen characters or those living in the off-screen world.

In another bout of coviewing, Tanner brings me a vase that he constructed at school. The living room is still filled with darkness and illuminated only by the light of the television and the lamp in the corner of the room that was left on by Diane who woke up earlier that morning to study. Tanner explains to me how the vase was made. He stops a few moments into the middle of his sentences to shift focus away from the vase and towards the television. The commonality in these moments is animation. Tanner stops to watch any time the animated karaoke machine is on the screen (as opposed to the majority live action cast).

The second phenomena, and the most overt representation of the development of an on screen relationship, is rooted in the connection between children and the characters that they deem relatable. In a later observation Tanner relates to one of the blue furry characters with an affection towards cookies named Cookie Monster:

The scene on the television opens with Cookie Monster singing with a low scratchy but friendly voice. Tanner stands on the back of the leather couch slowly rotating his body side to side. Cookie Monster is surrounded by the various characters of the show and the background of the scene is black. The scene switches to an open oven with a tray of 20 cookies being pulled out of it. Tanner knows what is about to happen. He preemptively states how ridiculous it is that Cookie Monster eats so messy. By this time, Cookie Monster is shoving piles of cookies into his mouth and, as Tanner predicted, most of the cookies can be seen crumbling to the floor. Tanner shakes his head and says “If I was Cookie Monster, I wouldn’t do that!” He then proceeds to show what he would do if he was Cookie Monster. He holds both of his hands pressed against his mouth and opens and closes his mouth in a Pac-man fashion with his eyes closed. At the same time, he shakes his head back and forth. He explains that this would be a better way to actually eat the cookies because that is what Cookie Monster wants.

In this moment, Tanner is demonstrating Sesame Street’s unique ability to inspire generalization from on screen-pretend actions to off-screen real actions. Further, Tanner sympathizes with Cookie Monster when he acknowledges that Cookie Monster must be frustrated because he knows that he wants to eat the cookies but is not succeeding.

In a similar moment of character sympathy, Tanner slouches in the couch and reacts to a segment featuring the main character of the show – Elmo, a red furry monster:

“Oh, what are they doing?” he said sarcastically with his hand slapped against his forehead and in a way that made it seem like he was embarrassed for Elmo who was drawing a square on the wall with a crayon. When the square was finished, it revealed a mariachi band and an abandoned drum. He says, again before it begins, “Oh they have to tell Elmo how fast to drum.” Tanner acts embarrassed for his friend Elmo and then relieved when he understands that the character is not simply committing an act of vandalism.

Tanner is building enough of a relationship with the character that he demonstrates physical embarrassment for his actions. To Tanner, the actions of Elmo appear to be representative of Tanner and, as he would with an off-screen friend, Tanner reacts with a sympathetic response.

In addition to moments of sympathy and relatability, these moments with Tanner demonstrate the third phenomena of developing a relationship with television – reliability. Richert et. al. (2011) explain that reliability is built when a child recognizes a pattern in a source's ability to provide accurate information. In the case of relationship building, Richert et. al (2011) explains that a child’s ability to deem a relationship partner as reliable is fundamental to the meaning of the impact and success of the relationship. Further, he explains that repeated imitation of peers is a natural process by which children demonstrate their belief that a source of information is reliable. The scenes that garnered the most reaction were those that were recurring segments in every episode.

Enthusiasm lulled between the two boys who were staring at the television with nearly glazed over eyes until all of the characters showed up dancing and singing on a white screen. Tanner smiled and sighed “Letter of the day, finally.” Peter echoed Tanner’s sentiments and expressed interest in Letter of the Day. Tanner inquisitively wondered what the letter would be. A large D showed up on the screen. “D… I wonder what they could use ‘D’ for?” The characters returned to the screen and then the word ‘doctor’ appears on the screen. In a near epiphany Tanner says “Oh Doctor! They always choose a letter that they will use.” Peter talks over him and echoes “Doctor”. They watch the song until it is almost over and Tanner explains that they used ‘D’ for Dress-up already and again Peter echoes “yea, D for dress up.”

In a similar moment of identified reliability Tanner and Peter are both watching a recurring segment featuring Cookie Monster:

With complete (not simply echoed) engagement, Peter sees Cookie Monster dancing on the television and singing “How many cookies”. The song lasts for a few seconds and the next screen shot is a baking tray on the stove with two cookies on it. Before Tanner can answer, Peter picks his head up from his brother’s lap and shouts “TWO!” Tanner affirms him by nodding his head and saying “Two.” Peter puts his head back down gently and continues working on an impressive Lego ship.

In a final moment of reliability building, Tanner sees an uncharacteristic component of the scene and generalizes it to his own life:

A segment called “Elmo’s world” shows a cartoon TV in Elmo’s room and with a raised eyebrow Tanner asks why the TV is there if they aren’t watching anything. He asks the question three times in succession. Each time with more emphasis and finally the TV flickers on and he accepts the action with a simple “Oh” and continues watching. Not only is Tanner demonstrating the reliable nature of this segment by recognizing something out of character, but he is also generalizing to his own life where they only pay attention to the TV if they are actively watching it (as opposed to using it as background noise).

These examples of reliability forming suggest the level of belief that the boys have in the television show as being a peer that is a valid source of information. They are imitating, engaging, and responding with the content in the segments. Further, the boys are considering the content on the television screen to be consistently accurate and representative of the real world, even though much of the content is fantastical. In these moments of building reliability with relatable characters in recurring segments within an environment constructed for and by social interaction, the two boys are cultivating a relationship with pretend characters that will expand beyond the confines of the television screen.

A Generalizable Impact

For a relationship to break beyond the physical confines of the television screen, children have to see the value in crafting a meaningful relationship that can exist in both of their on-screen and off-screen worlds. This is the third and final observed element of a child’s relationship with Sesame Street: generalizability.

Diane mentions that in conversations with her boys, it becomes evident that their relationship with television exists both on and off screen.

They will talk about a character as friends, and I’ll have to press and find out that it is something that they saw on TV and not something that they experienced in school. I have no idea who it is they are talking about because I don’t watch it with them. I don’t know the names. They just bring it up like it is somebody that they know.

She discusses one example in which her oldest boy was potty training. When they visited a new venue for an event, Tanner explained that “‘Daniel’ says there is a bathroom everywhere he goes.” After probing, Diane realized that Tanner was talking about Daniel Tiger, a character from the show of the same name. The way that Tanner talked about Daniel was so indistinguishable from the way that he talks about his off-screen friends that his mother had difficulty distinguishing between the two.

Diane confirms in her interview what would later be seen in observations: the off-screen presence of the boys’ favorite television shows would extend beyond the conversations they have with one another. On one site visit, one of these toys made a prominent appearance and highlighted the influence of the social nature of co-viewing.

Peter grabbed only one toy while we were on a tour of their bedroom – a large bright room with bay windows that looked out over a tree lined street. The room had two beds and was quite obviously decorated by their parents who had both studied architecture. The toy was a big plastic bulky watch that lit up. It shot light out of the turn dial on the side. Peter was aiming the beam of light at me and then at my hand. He moved it closer and closer. The energetic 4.5-year-old was focusing and silent for the first time of the tour. Peter persisted with this light for a few more seconds and then his older brother Tanner took a break from sweeping up pretend garbage to come over to us. He grabbed his brother’s wrist and explained to him why it wasn’t working. Then finally the beam of light produced a picture on the side of my hand, Peter got excited and pushed the front of the watch towards my face so that I could see it was the characters from the TV show Paw Patrol. After fixing his brother’s watch, Tanner leaned into my shoulder and explained that he got that watch for his brother because Peter had a Paw Patrol book already and knew that his brother liked the TV show.

This moment highlights that the social atmosphere constructed while viewing translates into the brothers’ off-screen social life. Off screen, their interactions are still connected to the reliable and relatable characters that physically disappeared when the television was turned off.

The generalizable nature of their interactions with television shows is not unidirectional. It is not simply the case that children take what they learn from television and apply it to their off-screen worlds. Children often take what they learn in their off-screen worlds and apply it to their developing on-screen relationships. While viewing a scene set at an eye clinic, Tanner blurs the line between real and pretend, on-screen and off-screen, as he engages in a comparison between what the characters of the television show are experiencing and what he experienced in a recent health clinic at his school.

Tanner stands up and leans on the back of the couch with the remote still in his hand. He looks at me and smiles through a huge pair of dimples. He says that the scene on the show where Peter’s favorite character (Abby Cadabby) takes her friend to the eye doctor reminds him of what happened last week at school. There was a health clinic at his school where they checked his ears with machines that beep. “They know when it’s beeping even though they can’t hear it and you are supposed to raise your hand every time it beeps.” He goes on to talk about the way that they tested his eyes with a pair of glasses. One lens was covered so you could only see with one eye, he demonstrates by pinching his left eye closed and pointing with his right hand at an invisible letter chart. He is still standing on the couch while he paints the scene at the health clinic and he intermittently stops between words to listen to the characters on the screen that are now at the eye doctor.

In this moment, Tanner is engaged in mass generalizing between his on-screen and off-screen worlds. He is blurring the lines as he relates information learned off-screen to on-screen experiences and vice versa. The way that he does this with fluidity demonstrates his perception of the off-screen and on-screen worlds being extremely similar. Even though one is occupied almost exclusively by pretend characters, he expects that the experience of the character at the eye doctor will resemble the one that he experienced just weeks before.

Some of the tools they are using at the doctor are familiar and Tanner points them out. He also admits not recognizing some of the tools they are using. He very enthusiastically points out the letter chart they are using to test the prince’s vision and notices that the letter chart has shapes on it “mine was just like that but it had letters instead of shapes”. He holds his fingers close together and tells me that the letters on the bottom were small. He takes a break to watch a few more seconds. Then his eyes get wide and he tells me that there was even a mini sheet and he brings all of the tips of his fingers together on both hands and then squeezes his hands together to show how small the letters were. “but it wasn’t hard” he said with a matter of fact tone.

Tanner was explaining his health clinic day at school, he was comparing it to what he was seeing on TV. There were tools that he didn’t understand but he was able to deduce what they were from context. He would also use the moment to explain how his experience was different from the character (shapes vs. letters, different equipment, etc.), but he fully accepted that the pretend experiences of the characters could occur in the off-screen world.

Discussion

On why children watch television

Before a child can engage with their television, there is a complex web of motivations and agendas at play. This network of consistently adult-driven agendas makes the decision to turn on the television, identify content and limit viewing. In a seemingly negative relationship, as restrictions on viewing are increased, the child’s agency in the process is restricted. These motivations are layers deep and stem from genuine care for children’s health, well-being and development. However, better understanding the way that children engage with television and considering it as something more than a necessary evil will allow us to better support the lives of children.

Currently, the most societally driven decision a parent makes in supporting or restricting their child’s television viewing habits is the decision to turn on the television in the first place. In this study, Diane consistently reported feeling guilt about letting her children sit in front of their television. However, in the reviewed literature (and in this study), the most operationalized motivation for turning on the television was to occupy her children while she focused on any number of other activities. While a difficult decision, many parents do make the eventual decision to turn on the television, but their motivations are rarely focused on the developmental needs and desires of children and are focused solely on their needs. While taking actions that support themselves as parents is not an inherently damaging decision, their initial stance towards television makes it very difficult for children to engage authentically under the weight of their subsequent restrictions.

Parents have several reservations about the content that they select for their children. While often reported as a motivation, the preference of the children is regularly restricted to the predetermined choices of the parents (Beyens & Eggermont, 2014). When making the decision to allow children to watch television, parents are motivated by the intelligence of the content, the levels of stimulation, and finally, the child’s perceived entertainment values (Beyens & Eggermont, 2014). Research shows that parents also report needing to feel ‘safe’ with the content that they selected for their children (Beyens & Eggermont, 2014). It is this motivation that promotes the belief that the television acts as a babysitter. Further, this motivation addresses the reduction of a child’s agency. Inherent in this decision is the belief that if children were left to their own devices, they would select unacceptable content and would be unable to comprehend the messages communicated by the content.

Finally, parents are heavily motivated by their pasts and society to restrict the duration of viewing by their children (Rideout, 2014). There is a constant stream of news promoting the ideal number of hours children at different developmental stages should spend in front of their screen (e.g., Evans, Jordan, & Horner 2011). This conversation is responsible for drawing the attention away from the quality of content viewed and toward the quantity of television viewed. While the mother in this case study was not motivated strictly by the quantity of television her children watched, it was consistently favored as a form of mediation. Crucially, this content reduces the interaction between a child and their television to a passive one and negates the recognition that children could potentially form meaningful and beneficial relations with the content and characters on shows such as Sesame Street which are designed to support the development of children.

Interestingly, the Clarke-Vandstone family presented evidence that contradicts the literature or positions them as a statistical minority. First, Diane reported a general belief that education does not belong on television as time spent watching television is meant to be a break from structured learning. Second, though their choices were informally restricted, the boys were left to their own devices every morning when selecting television shows to watch. This meant that they were more in control and identified more with the content they were viewing. Finally, Diane discussed a tension between selecting content for her children to view. At times she mentions that she wanted to know more of what her children were watching so that she could trust it in the same way that she trusts their schools. At other times, she expresses guilt for not coviewing because she wants to have meaningful conversations with her boys about what they are watching. For Diane, she acknowledged that television serves a necessary occupying role in the house and she wished that she could watch along with them.

On How Children Watch

Through these observations and interviews, there were two components of creating the social atmosphere in which children could cultivate their relationship with Sesame Street. First, children engaged in co-viewing with their siblings. Sitting alongside a friend in the viewing process primed the interaction with the characteristics of a peer-to-peer engagement. Second, children engaged in distracted viewing with the world around them. Their attention to the screen ebbed and flowed as it competed with the off-screen stimuli in the child’s world. As the children sing along and hold conversations about (and not about) the content on screen, they begin to generalize the worlds to each other in real time. As this study saw with Tanner and the eye doctor especially, this real time generalizing was the catalyst to a relationship that would exist even when the television is turned off.

Central to constructing the bridge between on-screen and off-screen worlds is the perceived relatability and reliability of the television characters. Characters who are relatable garnered more attention that those that were not and were brought up in conversation more than those with which the child could not relate to. In the case of Peter, he was engaged in deep distracted viewing and would pay attention to the screen only when his favorite characters appeared. In the case of learning from television, the literature reviewed demonstrates that children need to deem a character as being a reliable source of confirming unobserved truths. When Tanner is learning from Abby Cadabby’s visit to the eye doctor, he is relating his experiences to her experiences and is expanding his schema for eye exams. Even more, he is talking back to the screen as if he is attempting to adapt Abby’s schema for a health and wellness visit.

On the generalizable impact

Once a character is both reliable and relatable, the characters’ presence and lessons begin to leap out of the screen and into the child’s everyday life as a digital representation of Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory. However, in this case, it is the child’s scaffolded relationship with characters on the television that provide meaningful learning opportunities and not the child’s off-screen peers. Tanner’s on-screen and off-screen exploration of the eye doctor without human interference represents Sesame Street’s ability to act as its own experiential mediator. As the reviewed literature explains, this is the crucial mechanism by which a child is able to generalize an action on screen to their off-screen world.

One example of the off-screen representation occurs in the frequent conversations between parents and children. Diane reported having a strong preference for engaging in conversations with her children about the content that they are watching and, when they are unaware of the content being watched, she often had a hard time differentiating between off-screen and on-screen peers in these conversations. Not only do children talk about these characters as they do their off-screen friends, but they even reportedly make selections about the characters that they choose to favor in similar ways as they select off-screen peers (e.g., gender, personality, morals, etc).

Beyond conversations, these dynamic relationships influence the lives of children across the domains of their lives in ways that resemble the influence of their off-screen peers. The way that children engage with content while the television is on is peer-like, as is the way that the characters remain present in their thoughts and actions even when the character is not immediately present. In this case study, it begins to be seen that the traditionally analog definition of a learning partner as described by Bandura (1977) is incomplete and needs to be stretched to accommodate for the fluid and dynamic relationships that children form with the characters and content of their favorite television shows.

Conclusion

While not definitive, this case study begins to show an evident blur between children’s formations of on-screen and off-screen relationships. With Sesame Street, children are developing relationships with reliable and relatable characters in ways that strongly resemble the formation of new peers. Further, when examined even by the parent of these children, it is hard for the parent to distinguish the difference between her children’s on-screen and off-screen friends without explicitly knowing the context of the identity of the relationship partner. Sesame Street’s support of the characteristics of parasocial relationships has enhanced the ability of children to blur the boundaries between real and pretend. Children are generalizing pretend behaviors seen on television to make sense of the world around them, they are engaging the scripts and conflict resolution tactics of their on-screen relationship partners in their imaginary play, and they are having deep and meaningful conversations with their parents and friends about their relationships in the context of a shared culture.

The social off-screen environment created by distracted viewing and co-viewing primes children to consider the on-screen world through a socialized lens while watching television. Further, the program’s ability to increase their characters’ relatability and reliability builds interest and trust between the child and the television show. The more socialized, interesting, and trustworthy the place between a child and the television becomes, the more likely they are to blur the division between off screen and on screen worlds and consider the show a source of peer support. This environment allows them to generalize lessons between worlds and perceive the characters on Sesame Street as peers in a manner that closely resembles the formation and utilization of off-screen peers proposed by Albert Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory.

Looking forward, the field would benefit from continued research into the power of this multidimensional relationship to support nonformal and informal learning. The worlds of children increasingly include technology and it is crucial that we begin recognizing the relationships children form with televisions as complex, dynamic, and active. These relationships have immense potential beyond simply occupying children. Acknowledging that these relationships may start in two dimensions but regularly and authentically expand into the child’s three dimensional ecosystems of learning, self-exploration and play will begin a conversation that recognizes the child as an active agent. Further, this perspective will shift the motivations of those in power away from strictly limiting quantity and towards supporting the quality of children’s dynamic relationships with television.

References

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Appendix A

Interview Protocol

Introduction

Thank for meeting. If it is alright with you, I am going to start recording this conversation now.

My study is focused on describing the relationship that children from with the characters and content of Sesame Street.

Two parts: formal interviews & In home observations

This is the consent form. I will give you a moment to read it and let me know if you have any questions. You will notice that the form mentions in home observations. We will start with the interview today and if we want to move forward we can begin scheduling observations.

Do you have any questions?

Great, please sign and date the form and here is a copy for you to keep and reference.

Participants