Navigating the “Empirical Darkness” of Impacts of Digital Media on Hispanic-Latino Families

My family immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s. Growing up, I watched a lot of television. It was one of my primary sources for learning about American culture and improving my English.  If I’m being honest, television helped turned me into the assimilated American that I am today.

Despite the 30 years that have passed since I was a young kid glued to the TV, and despite the surge in digital media, very little is known about how these technologies impact Latino parenting practices and the development and academic achievement of Latino children. That’s according to the report Digital Media and Latino Families, released last month by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Such information is essential given mounting evidence that digital media may alter family roles and that Latinos’ access to and use of digital technologies is increasing.

To be sure, this framing begs a question: can we meaningfully speak of “Latinos” as a single community with a common approach to digital media? Latinos are a very diverse group. Take me, for example, I am from Chile, a country with its own food, alcohol, dance, and fútbol affiliations of choice. That cultural milieu differs enormously from those anchored by, for example, the food of Guatemala, the drinks of Mexico, the dances of Venezuela, and the fútbol clubs of Argentina.  And these cultural markers are just the most visible indicators of more profound differences between Latinos from different parts of the hemisphere. However, there are some cultural similarities in Latinos’ views of family and child rearing that can be used to draw inferences about how digital media impacts these traditional norms.

Research (pay wall) has identified three concepts that can be used to frame the parenting goals of many Latinos: familismo, respeto and educación. Familismo has been used to describe the cohesion of many Latino families, which is grounded in part on “the expectation that the family will be the primary source of instrumental and emotional support [and] the commitment to the family over individual needs and desires.” Respeto refers to the importance placed on showing respect for adults and also for playing your role in the family. In other words, your role as a sister (or as a daughter, etc) comes with a complementary set of expectations of appropriate manners and behavior. Finally, educación describes the process of learning respeto and adopting familismo as an essential core value.

What do these parenting goals have to do with digital media? The report’s authors Bruce Fuller, José Ramón Lizárraga, and James H. Gray point out several research studies documenting that our views on the purpose and use of digital technologies is socially constructed. For example, Latino parents placed stricter limits on their children’s internet and computer use than White parents, in part due to fears that these technologies “isolated their youngsters, promoting individualistic values and lax personal discipline.”

The report also draws on Vikki Katz’s work to show how bilingual children often broker their Spanish-speaking parents’ interactions with doctors, landlords or teachers. Digital media is yet another space where bilingual children are placed into this brokering role, “[a]s Latino children become digital experts, new media are placing them in authoritative roles vis-à-vis parents and other kin...Parents rely on their children’s digital savvy to help them with shopping, finding locations, quick entertainment, and making a multitude of social connections.”

Disruptions to the family hierarchy aren’t necessarily negative — children gain the opportunity to improve their communication skills and these interactions can spur collaborative learning — but neither are they irrelevant. The researchon familismo, respeto and educación also documents how these concepts change across generations and as families become more acculturated to U.S. norms.

Beyond potential cultural implications, the report sought to identify evidence of the impact of digital media on Latino children’s learning. The limited literature base on this topic suggests that benefits, such as gains in reading comprehension due to increases in the number of hours spent playing video games, are mediated by gender, age and socio-economic status. For example, one study that examined the relationship between increased time spent on computer game play and increased academic achievement found some positive impacts for White and African-American youth, but not for Latinos.

Moreover, the report is clear about the mismatch between content and outcomes: despite the fact that many Latinos are tuning in, there has been little consideration given to learning more about whether digital media are having a positive impact on children’s learning and behavior. Some broadcasters, such as Univision, tailor content to Latino audiences and have initiated campaigns to provide parents with education tips and tools. Sesame Workshop is deliberate about ensuring that content is accessible to a range of viewers. They receive input on their content from a range of stakeholders in the Latino community to “ensure that needs are met and content is culturally relevant and clear,”as Jennifer Kotler Clarke,  Vice President, Research & Evaluation as Sesame Workshop, shared in an email.

But they represent the minority, as the authors note, “Producers seem to hold scarce knowledge of Latino communities and a weak capacity to engage these children and families.” Digital content is often created within the framework of what its producers believe to be appropriate models of learning and social behavior and with insufficient knowledge of the values and practices of the families using the content.

One way to bridge the gap is to begin illuminating the “empirical darkness” around the benefits and risks of digital technologies.  As Fuller, Lizárraga and Gray note such research is imperative given “that digital tools increasingly shape the daily activities, learning and socialization of Latino children.”

Note: This post is part of New America’s Dual Language Learner National Work Group. Click here for more information on this team’s work."