Well, I think part of that can be explained best by merging
   Piaget and Vygotsky; -I think piaget has it right with regards
   to stages; there are general stages that children go through -
   and i think Vygotsky has it right with the social aspects of
   learning.

   Anyway, long story short, it seems that around 6-8 years old,
   parents are no longer as important to children as their peers
   are.... and sometimes teachers too. But by this point, parents
   are more the roles they play; part police, part teacher, part
   friend, part parent from the kids point of view - whereas "pure
   friends" (friend-friends one might say) have the greatest
   influence on interests and development.

   That includes the constructed friends of TV, youtube, characters
   in video games, pets, etc.

   And... well, that's where they're going to learn about sex at
   that point. By the time they're interested in the subject, their
   parental influence are already much less but the wide range of
   friends is far more influential.

   Does media affect the mind? Well, in my mother's day, comic
   books were "works of the devil" but she still read and collected
   them, even as preachers and polititians and scientists alike
   cried "These are bad for your kids"

   But they weren't.

   [or perhaps they *were* - I'd be curious for someone to do a
   sociocultural study to find out the influence of comic books
   from my mothers's generation compared to video games compared to
   movies, tv shows - through the generations... and see what
   influences they had (if any) on future behavior.