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Growing up with a television set in his room, Vic Strasburger said he knows how powerfully media can influence children and adolescents.
“They are what you make out of it,” he said. “They can be incredibly, extremely bad if you’re talking about violent Internet pornography. They can be intrinsically good if you’re talking about ‘Sesame Street.’ The problem is the parents are not managing proper media use.”
Strasburger, a professor of public health at UNMH, has been conducting research on the effects of media exposure to youth for 30 years. He co-wrote the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Statement on Children, Adolescents and the Media in 1983.
For Strasburger, 64, his research on media exposure “is the most neglected area of child and adolescent influence development.”
Because of the evolving state of programs and the increasing amounts of media exposure children get nowadays, media exposure can have negative effects, Strasburger said. He said excessive media exposure can promote health problems among children.
“Kids learn aggression from media,” he said. “There are significant findings for sex, for drugs, for school performance, for obesity, for sleep. The media basically affects every concern that parents and pediatricians have about kids. They’re not the leading cause of problems, but they contribute epidemiologically about 10 to 20 percent.”
But he said media exposure can be beneficial to children if utilized properly.
“I’ve been inside the industry,” he said. “I’ve watched a couple of films being made. I have friends in the industry. I am a published novelist. I’ve written for television. I’m not the anti-media by any means.”
Strasburger holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University, and a medical degree from Harvard University. He said he decided to transition into a medical career after meeting and working with famous American poets, such as Robert Lowell, in college.
“I figured out early on that I’m not as good as they are,” he said. “I figured that I could not make a living writing. And writing is a luxury; medicine is a necessity. A novel isn’t going to save someone’s life, but as a doctor, I could conceivably do that.”
Still, Strasburger said he is “living proof that you can do something with an English degree.” He said he has not given up on writing, and he boasts one published novel, two unpublished ones, and a nonfiction piece in the works.
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Originally from Baltimore, Strasburger moved to Albuquerque in 1987 when he got a job at UNM as a professor. He said that although his focus is in public health, he tried to teach communication and journalism courses at the University in the past, but the department kept denying his plea.
Despite his initial hesitance, Strasburger said he loves the city.
“Growing up in Baltimore, I was worried that I’d miss the water,” he said. “But the desert is like the ocean. There’s hardly a day when I’d come to work and not think how beautiful it is.”
Strasburger said he encourages parents to manage their children’s media exposure more efficiently. He said parents should limit their kids’ media exposure to no more than two hours per day, to watch television with their kids, and to “keep technology out of the bedroom.”
And with his research, he aims to convince industries to increase funding to media research, he said.
“What I’m hoping is that there would be a new government report on children, adolescents and media,” he said. “The last one was in 1982, before the Internet, iPads and cell phones. I’m hoping that somehow we could establish a dialogue.”
