Born Naughty? Should 'bad brat' documentaries be more protective of their young subjects?
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Version 0 of 1. Anyone flicking between a stack of newspapers from the past few weeks and a pile from a decade ago would be struck by a huge change in the depiction of children. Unless permission has been given by the parents, the offspring of the famous and infamous are now usually given pixellated features, or an image is used in which the child’s face is buried in their mum or dad’s sweater, possibly from fear of photographers. This shift was driven by new legal and media regulatory definitions of privacy, which in turn reflected a greater awareness of the physical and digital risks to pre-adults from the dissemination of their images and identities online. Bizarrely, though, it remains common on television to see children – and often, or even especially, vulnerable, unhappy or sensitive children – in closeup and interviews during programmes that invite viewers to find entertainment in the disturbances or eccentricities of subjects who, if they weren’t appearing in the evening schedules, would confine their experience of TV to CBeebies. In the tradition of BBC3’s Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways (monster toddlers) and Channel 4’s Child Genius (monster swots), Channel 4 tonight starts Born Naughty? (8pm), which features children with serious behavioural problems such as temper tantrums and violent refusal to accept discipline. The programme obeys the now familiar grammar of this genre, in which footage filmed by hidden cameras and testimony from despairing carers are analysed by the qualified professionals who traditionally provide a patina of academic and journalistic respectability. In Born Naughty?, GP Dr Dawn Harper and paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram occupy the role taken in Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways by the otherwise impressive psychologist Dr Tanya Byron. Whereas children of the same ages would almost always be pixellated or anonymous in newspapers, the young subjects of this documentary clock up screen time in plain sight, not only through the footage from the secret cameras in their playrooms but in conventionally filmed segments shot at family meal-times or during outings. And, while the commentary gives only the children’s first names and broad geographical location (“Theo from Surrey”), those featured must be identifiable to neighbours and schoolmates, with obvious implications for their present and future privacy. At a time when teachers and parents are rightly encouraged to give warnings that material posted through social media may haunt their charges’ future private lives and professional prospects, it seems perverse to leave some children with a long media tail of hour-long episodes, spin-off publicity and brutal dissection by commenters. The defence of the broadcasters would presumably be that informed consent has been given by the families filmed. However, morally and legally, meaningful agreement can only, with such young participants, be given by parents or guardians, rather than by those who are the programme’s real quarry. Quite understandably, the young participants are likely to appreciate only the excitement of being a TV star and having their pictures in listing magazines, rather than the risk of leaving a YouTube footprint that will trip them up in later life. And, with regard to possible short-term effects, you don’t have to be a qualified paediatrician to worry whether television transmission – with the attendant publicity – is necessarily the best way of dealing with children whose behaviour may include elements of exhibitionism and attention-seeking. In series that are a populist offshoot of psychology, how much study has been done of the impact on the minds and personalities of these children of being subjected to national prurience or ridicule as a super-brat or hyper-geek? The stars of Child Genius may well have issues in the future with their parents for the hot-house educative pressure to which they were subjected, but some will surely feel an extra level of distress at having been served up for peak-time sneering as well. At best, the cast list of Born Naughty? face an especially hi-tech version of the use of embarrassing images in wedding speeches or office leaving parties, while the worst potential consequences are best left unconsidered. If a TV company announced a Junior Big Brother, in which young contestants were confined in a house and their interaction filmed, TV regulators would step in, fearful of the risk of cruelty and psychological harm. But, while bad-brat programming makes a show of helping both participating parents and families among the audience with similar problems, these formats feel just as potentially damaging. A possible plot for a crime novel would involve a former star of freak-child TV taking terrible revenge on the family and psychologist who used them as broadcast material. The final chapter would consist of a clinical report assessing whether they had always possessed pathological tendencies or if their personality had been disturbed by unfair early exposure on TV. |