Through the Eyes of Early Childhood Students: Television, Tablet Computers, Internet and Smartphones

Abstract

The features, functions, and usage of media and media environment which have an important role in the lives of today’s children are increasing day by day. This study aims to evaluate media environments and the children’s experience from their points of view. The study followed the qualitative design and the participants of the study consisted of 34 preschool students. Children were asked questions to learn their opinions about television, tablet computers, the internet, and smartphones. The results revealed that children had knowledge about the media environment and they used it intensively. However, they were not aware of the possible dangers of the media contents substantially. It was understood that children did not get any knowledge or education about media usage and most of the children encountered negative content. The results suggest a need for training in media literacy for children.

Pula students’ television competencies

“…The similarities were found to the wider international context results that, regardless of age, almost always show the same -lack of television competence (e.g. Fedorov & Levitskaya, 2017;Çetintaş & Turan, 2018). In general, we highlight three important findings.…”

“I can imagine myself being inside PC and driving”: Greek pre-schoolers drawing meaning of computers for them

“…Although research on children and computers has been extensive for many decades (Zawacki-Richter & Latchem, 2018) and from a great variety of perspectives-the teachers' perspective (Dong, 2018;Dong & Newman, 2016;Dore & Dynia, 2020;Marklund, 2020;Otterborn at al., 2019;Theodosiadou & Markos, 2013); the parents' perspective (Hadad et al, 2020); children's point of view (Cetintas & Turan, 2018)-there is still skepticism towards the core question of whether the use of computers has positive effects on children. Gardasevic et al (2015) argue that the computer counterpoise both positive and negative effects on childhood depending on the guidance that parents and teachers give to them (e.g., educational programs and well-designed games enable children to improve their knowledge and skills) (Gardasevic et al, 2015) but also depend on the skills that are being cultivated (e.g., quantitative skills might be positively affected by computer use) (Heather et al, 2018).…”