<\/p>\n
Television creatives and executives have pledged to increase racial diversity<\/u><\/a> on and off screen for years. But whether it makes a difference in viewers\u2019 actual feelings and reactions toward race and class has long been a question.<\/p>\n A new report, published Monday in the journal American Psychologist by the American Psychological Assn., indicates that it does. Titled \u201cThe Role of Children\u2019s Media in White, U.S. Children\u2019s Developing Racial Bias,\u201d the yearlong longitudinal study that looked at white children between the ages of 4 and 8 found that those whose favorite TV shows and movies portrayed fewer Black characters were less likely to choose to play with a Black child, held less positive attitudes toward Black children and were less likely to choose to attribute Black-white racial inequalities to intrinsic racial differences. These results were more overt when the analysts factored in class and status dynamics.<\/p>\n Michael T. Rizzo, an assistant professor of psychology at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the corresponding author of this study, says that his work looked at white children\u2019s reactions because \u201cthey are the dominant and majority group in the United States\u201d and research has shown that \u201cthey\u2019re the most likely to develop biases.\u201d Similarly, he says that while \u201canti-Black racism is not the only form of racism in our country,\u201d historically speaking, \u201cthis is where the literature really focuses on.\u201d The age range was chosen because accurate readings on these topics are harder with older kids. As kids age, he says, they usually \u201cpick up the idea that they shouldn\u2019t be responding with prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n Depictions of classism in these programs \u2014 from when it was obvious, with the lead characters shown as royalty, doctors or politicians, to less overt examples like a secondary character who\u2019s just there for comic relief or may not be as wealthy or smart as the leads \u2014 were equally important, Rizzo says, although he acknowledges it\u2019s hard to say how aware young kids are of this type of divide.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if they have some of these biases, they recognize that they shouldn\u2019t be telling the experimenter about those biases,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n A new parent himself, Rizzo also comes to these findings with a personal stake.<\/p>\n \u201cI have an 18-month-old son,\u201d he says. And while he says that \u201cthe main motivations are scientific and understanding what\u2019s going on, as a father of a white son, I want to know what world he\u2019s going to be experiencing, and how he\u2019s going to be making sense of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Rizzo and his team examined the media consumption of 593 white children from across America. The aim was to assess how their biases were affected by scene-by-scene content analysis of the racial representation of 29 popular kids shows and movies. All of these titles were chosen based on parental and guardians\u2019 reports of the subjects\u2019 favorite programs. They include familiar titles like the Disney movies \u201cFrozen 2\u201d and \u201cThe Princess and the Frog,\u201d and TV shows that have long been staples of childhood like \u201cSesame Street,\u201d \u201cDora the Explorer\u201d and \u201cSofia the First.\u201d<\/p>\n The study avoided programming with predominantly non-human characters, even if the voice casting and dialogues may have helped them be racially, gender or ethnically coded.<\/p>\n That the paper\u2019s release coincides with summer vacation and, thus, a likely rise in screen time, is also significant. In May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a study<\/u><\/a> that claimed \u201cearly exposure to screens carries developmental and cognitive risks,\u201d and a May report from children\u2019s educational gaming company LingoKids<\/u><\/a> found that \u201c98% of U.S. parents allow some daily screen time,\u201d usually as a childcare necessity when adults have to work or complete household tasks like cooking dinner.<\/p>\n As Rizzo\u2019s study notes, this also means that the interactions with different people and cultures that used to happen organically in neighborhoods and in social spaces are increasingly being replaced by digital simulation.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is more speculation, but the more time children spend watching shows that are representing biased race and status disparities, the more time they\u2019re absorbing and trying to make sense of those, and thinking about those,\u201d Rizzo says. \u201cIf children are less exposed to the inequality in media, then the inequality in media might have less of an impact. But that doesn\u2019t mean that they wouldn\u2019t be developing the biases [in other places].\u201d<\/p>\n As the chief creative officer for Fred Rogers Productions, Ellen Doherty oversees content focused on younger viewers that she says tell \u201cstories that are about the human experience. And the human experience of being a 3-year-old or a 63-year-old, or wherever you are in between or beyond, is actually pretty universal.\u201d<\/p>\n When producing shows like \u201cDaniel Tiger\u2019s Neighborhood\u201d and \u201cOdd Squad,\u201d both programs studied by Rizzo and his team, Doherty says that the \u201cnumber one thing is embracing simplicity and knowing that, sometimes, fewer words can be better when they\u2019re the right words.\u201d A \u201cDaniel Tiger\u201d episode about a rainstorm could just have a tree break a window instead of more catastrophic damage. Meanwhile, it\u2019s important to embrace realism. The PBS Kids show \u201cAlma\u2019s Way,\u201d a Fred Rogers production, is set in the Bronx. Doherty says it would be inauthentic for that show not to have characters of racial minorities, even if this isn\u2019t something that\u2019s always addressed in the episodes\u2019 plots.<\/p>\n Rizzo notes that his findings do not have to have permanent implications.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren are still just starting to understand the world, and if you are able to intervene early, you can shape how children think for the rest of their lives,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He recommends watching these shows with kids and asking them how they feel or what they think it means when they see certain characters who have more authority than others or get to do cooler things. That way, he says, \u201cyou can start to get a sense of how they\u2019re understanding the world. Then, as a parent, you have the opportunity to shape those beliefs early on before they become really deeply entrenched.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Television creatives and executives have pledged to increase racial diversity on and off screen for years. But whether it makes a difference in viewers\u2019 actual feelings and reactions toward race and class has long been a question. A new report, published Monday in the journal American Psychologist by the American Psychological Assn., indicates that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2499911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2499910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Diversity-in-TV-shows-can-help-children-challenge-biases-study.com2F4e2F9a2F1fb277b04245b2a341690c33.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2499912,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499910\/revisions\/2499912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2499911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}