”It’s not healthy for children to be fans of something like that” – Educational perspectives on pop star Sanni and the changing forms of children’s music consumption
Abstract
This article discusses the educational challenges created by the increasing “youth culturalization” of children’s music consumption. The phenomenon is approached from the perspective of media debate caused by the lyrically controversial and sexually charged hit singles of Finnish pop star Sanni in 2016. The article maps the educational and parental concerns caused by Sanni’s music, as well as larger changes in childhood’s mediascape indicated by them. The article also studies the nature of the debate in relation to earlier cultural conflicts related to children’s media use. The article shows that the debate included several stereotypical elements familiar from the earlier moral panics concerning media and childhood. However, it also shows that the dispute gave a voice to a genuine worry about children’s well-being and the difficulty of parental control within the rapidly digitalizing culture. The study is based on data collected from online news forums and social media.
