Part 1 - Why should teachers care about digital literacy?

The article I was assigned for this week’s post was the review of Sexualisation of Young People by Papadopoulos (2010). Within this review, she discusses different aspects of the online world and sexualisation and how these things are increasingly having a bad impact on children and young people of today’s society. Sexualisation is ‘the imposition of adult sexuality on to children and young people before they are capable of dealing with it, mentally, emotionally or physically’ (Papadopoulos 2010: 23). Throughout the review, she highlights each area in which sexualisation is present and how that is affecting the young people who gain access to this content. She explains how ‘sexualised images are visible to everyone, including children and young people who may not have the maturity to rationalise and put what they’re seeing into context” (Papadopoulos 2010:24).

Papadopoulos (2010) highlights the areas in which sexualisation appears and the form in which it appears in. For example, in magazines and advertising, they airbrush images to ‘unobtainable perfection’ (Papadopoulos 2010:36) and allow children to pose/act inappropriately. She also mentions how in television programmes, women are sometimes dressed sexually and are spoken inappropriately by men. Within clothing, there are now push up bras for young teens and heeled shoes for children as young as four years old. On the internet, young people can easily access pornography sites through pop ups and search engines being easily unblocked. There is also an increasing issue of young girls posting and sending inappropriate pictures to male peers and social networking being a mixing bowl for issues exposure. Papadopoulos (2010) also discusses the issues surrounding computer games, mobile devices and music videos/lyrics being other factors that lead to exposure of inappropriate content.

The impacts of sexualisation and exposure to content includes body image issues, plastic surgery, mental health, eating disorders, gender stereotypes, sexual objectification, lap dancing and glamour modelling (Papadopoulos 2010:55). Due to these impacts, within primary schools, teachers are now having to increasingly be aware of issues regarding bullying, name calling and sexual harassment, all of which are caused by sexualisation and its exposure to anyone and everyone.

Teachers should care about digital literacy because we need to be aware and confident in that allowing our children to be independently going online, will not result in harmful material being inflicted upon them. Papadopoulos (2010:30) highlights that ‘cultural, religious, and class backgrounds will influence the family’s role in mediating sexualised media content as well as what is deemed appropriate and acceptable’. To follow this, I feel that if parents are not mediating their children’s content intake, then it is up to us as teachers, to be aware and try to monitor exactly what the children see within school. It is also vital to ensure our children of the risks and dangers of online and apply the ‘Every Child Matters Agenda’ that we need to ‘be healthy, be safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic wellbeing when online’ (Papadopoulos 2010:19).

Bibliography:

Papadopoulos, L. (2010) Sexualisation of Young People Review Home Office (Executive Summary – link on LN)http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100418065544/http://homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/Sexualisation-young-people2835.pdf?view=Binary (accessed 31/10/14)