The concerns are twofold. First, some parents are concerned about the language diet that television, video tapes, the Internet, personal computers, radios, cassettes and compact disks provide. Since many children consume large amounts of television, the passive reception of the majority language may affect both skills in the minority language and productive use in both the minority and majority language.
Some minority languages (and most languages other than English) have tended to respond to a diet of Anglo-American children's television by producing television programs in the minority language or dubbing cartoons and children's films. This is much to be applauded. Also, it is important that the minority language culture is spread through the mass media.
Parents who want their children to acquire a non-local language will need to obtain as much variety of mass media material as possible for their children. A diet of minority or ‘foreign' language mass media input is important, not only to enhance language competence, but also in the implied prestige value of the language.
At the same time, we need to be aware that the mass media provides receptive language only. Rarely does the child speak a language when watching television or listening to a record. Records, cassettes and compact disks that invite children to join in are more valuable in providing language practice.
As children move through middle childhood, and particularly when they enter their teenage years, there is often a pressure towards mass media in the dominant, majority language. The peer group listens to high-status Anglo-American pop music, films and television programs. The influential images in the pre-teenage and teenage years are too rarely from the minority language and too often via the English language. During these years, children's bilingualism may be at risk due to their conformity to peer group norms which stress majority culture.
The prestige of a language, or its negative image, is quickly picked up outside the home. When children join street groups, clubs and teams, they perceive the pecking order of languages. This is reinforced and extended by the media. Parents thus need to monitor and sometimes be creative in language arrangements to ensure the language diet is not becoming stale in one language and a feast in the other.
Research shows that children who maintain their minority language are the ones who, in their teenage years in particular, participate in out-of-school events in their minority language. Research from Wales suggests that it is not majority language mass media in and by itself that is a threat to the minority language in teenage children. Rather it is movement away from the minority language, to less participation in out-of-school events in the minority language, that causes language decline in teenagers. The culture of the teenager becomes a most important element in the language life of that teenager.