Shacknews Document
Lieberman Announces Key Senate Committee Approval of Legislation to Study Impact of Media on Children
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) today announced that the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has approved his bipartisan legislation, the Children Media Research and Advancement (CAMRA) Act. The legislation authorizes new research into the effects of viewing and using electronic media, including television, computers, video games and the Internet on children's cognitive, social, physical, and psychological development. The bill now goes to the Senate floor for consideration.
“Today’s vote by the HELP Committee is a big step toward helping parents get the information they need about the effect of media on their children,” Lieberman said. “America is a media-rich society, but despite the flood of information, we still lack critical information. As policymakers – and as parents – we have a responsibility to examine the effects of media on our children, a responsibility this legislation can better enable us to fulfill. No one is looking out, in a systematic way, for cumulative impact of today’s newer electronic media on our children. The questions about the effects – positive or negative - of media on our children’s health, education and development are too important to go unasked and unanswered.”
The Children Media Research and Advancement Act (CAMRA) establishes a research program on children and media within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which will work in coordination with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It directs CDC to contract with the National Academy of Science to examine the role and the effects, both positive and negative, that electronic media have in the lives of children, and to set research priorities. The CDC will then issue grants over a period of six years to researchers to examine the impact of media on children and adolescents’ ability to learn and their social, emotional, physical, and behavioral development.
A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that with respect to very young children, there is no reliable information or research about the impact of heavy exposure to electronic media. The report notes that “the rapid changes in our media environment have not been accompanied by a similar growth in our knowledge of how new media may impact children’s cognitive, social, emotional or physical development.”
Lieberman first introduced CAMRA in May of 2004 with the endorsement of a broad array of child advocacy organizations, including the Children's Digital Media Center, the Center for Media and Child Health at Harvard University Medical School, Children Now, the American Psychological Association, Common Sense Media and the Parents Television Council.
Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Rick Santorum (R-PA), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) are also co-sponsors of the CAMRA legislation.
