Theoretical and methodological basis of quality ...

Theoretical and methodological basis of quality education

Univerzitet u Beogradu, Učiteljski fakultet Srbija Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa w Nowym Sączu Polska

Theoretical and methodological basis of quality education Edited by Ivica Radovanović, PhD and Zdzisława Zacłona, PhD

Belgrade 2013

Scientific Board prof. Aleksandar Jovanović, PhD, prof. Ivica Radovanović, PhD, prof. Zdzisława Zacłona, PhD, prof. Marek Reichel, PhD Editorial Boards prof. Ivica Radovanović, PhD – chairman, prof. Aleksandar Jovanović, PhD, prof. Biljana Trebješanin, PhD, prof. Aurel Božin, PhD, Nataša Janković prof. Zdzisława Zacłona, PhD – chairwoman, prof. Jarosław Frączek, PhD, prof. Leszek Rudnicki, PhD, prof. Ryszard Gajdosz, PhD, prof. Wojciech Kudyba, PhD, prof. Monika Madej-Centarowska, PhD, prof. Waldemar Makuła, PhD Edited by prof. Ivica Radovanović, PhD, prof. Zdzisława Zacłona, PhD Reviewers prof. Jolanta Szempruch, PhD, prof. Milica Radović Tešić, PhD, prof. Anna Klim-Klimaszewska, PhD, prof. Aurel Božin, PhD Translation Nataša Janković, Marta Koch, Paulina Pietras-Jankowiak, Małgorzata Pietsch, Nina Wuczyńska, Jadwiga Rysiewicz, Biuro Tłumaczeń „LINGUIST” Paulina Pietras-Jankowiak/www.linguist.com.pl Technical Editing Zoran Tošić © Copyright by Učiteljski fakultet, Univerzitet u Beogradu Belgrade 2013 Copies 300 ISBN 978-86-7849-164-1 Address of Editorial Office Kraljice Natalije 43, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia tel. +381 11 361 52 25, e-mail: [email protected] Publisher Učiteljski fakultet, Univerzitet u Beogradu Kraljice Natalije 43, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia tel. +381 11 361 52 25, e-mail: [email protected] Printed by AKADEMIJA Kraljice Natalije 43, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia tel. 011 2658 938 / e-mail: [email protected]

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Aleksandar Tadić, Ivica Radovanović University of Belgrade, Teacher Education Faculty

Negative effects of electronic media use on children’s behaviour1 Summary is paper analyses research on the relationship between children and media, with a special insight into the potential dangers and negative effects of excessive and uncritical use of media on children’s behaviour, their school performance, social skills, sensibility and health. From an early age, children are exposed to an intensive use of media; at school age, the use of media already turns into a full-time workday or even more. is overview particularly focuses on the research of the impact of certain media contents on children’s behaviour in which violence is the dominant mode of behaviour. e influence of media on prompting asocial behaviour is intertwined with a large number of mediating factors (such as the child’s personality, environment and real life situations) and is conditioned by a certain cultural context. Attempts to alleviate the negative effects of inadequate and excessive use of media on children’s behaviour are supported by ever growing initiatives for developing media literacy among parents, teachers and children within the system of education. Key words: media, violence, children’s behaviour, upbringing, media literacy

Today’s children of both genders and all ages regularly use media2 and enjoy it, which has led to a growing interest in determining the educational potentials of media and certain media contents, as well as the negative effects on children’s development which they can cause. Children are “the most faithful and greatest consumers of electronic media messages“ (Zindovic-Vukadinovic, 1998: 109). Media teach children and youth to “facts, behaviour, values, norms and the way this world works, and they contribute 1

is paper results from the work on Project No. 179020 entitled: e Concepts and Strategies of Providing Quality in Basic School and Moral Education at the Teacher Education Faculty in Belgrade, which is financed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. 2 In this paper, the phrase use of media primarily refers to watching television (with special reference to television programme, television advertising and films) and the use of computer (especially the use of the Internet and video games).

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to the development of a view of the world” (Lemish, 2008: 225). Everyday, usually long-term use of media has been subject of many a research on the relationship between children and media (especially regarding the influence of television and computers). is relationship is considered in the light of constant and ever faster development and changes in the sphere of digital technologies. Dafna Lemish starts from the fact that “nowadays, there is a trend of convergence of various screen-based media: television, including cable and satellite connections, video-recorder and games, computer games, internet, cinema, and even display-equipped mobile phones“ (Lemish, 2008: 14) and says that today’s children are growing in a technologically protected environment. e stated screen culture offers children “an integrated reality, with objects, celebrities and social environments present in various media worlds, which children fully enjoy, fitting them into their everyday routine” (Lemish, 2008: 325). In contemporary pedagogical considerations of the relationship between children and media, bearing in mind the aforementioned, a special place belongs to the concept of media literacy.

Results of a research on the effects of children’s use of media In a voluminous study of the Kaiser Fondation (A Kaiser Family Foundation Report) conducted in USA in 2005, professor Donald Roberts and his associates from the Department of Communication at Stanford University found that young people (aged 8 to 18) spend on average eight and a half hours in the use of media every day (Roberts et al., 2005). is study reveals that today’s children and adolescents spend more than full daily working hours using media, and they do so by: watching TV and video clips (about four hours a day); listening to music (about an hour and fortyfive minutes a day); using computer (about an hour a day); playing video games (about fiy minutes a day); reading books, magazines and newspapers (about forty-five minutes a day), etc. More than a quarter of the time spent in the use of media (26,2%) is spent by them in a simultaneous use of more than one media (most oen it is the use of the internet while at the same time watching TV). Analysing these data, experts on neurology have said that young people, who are bombarded with digital stimulation, have their brains programmed to “crave for immediate satisfaction” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 45), and that young members of the hi-tech generations oen think that conventional television is much too slow and boring, because of which they use other media parallel with watching TV. e Kaiser Family Foundation

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study also contains data that children spend with their parents about two hours and fieen minutes daily, with their peers the same amount of time, and doing homework about fiy minutes per day. Among the authors who have dealt with the harmful effects of television on children’s behaviour, one book gained special popularity: Television: e Plug-In Drug, by Marie Winn. In this book, she reveals that it is preschool children who have become the largest class of consumers of television programmes, spending about 22, and some even up to 54 hours per week in front of TV sets (according to Shaw & Wood, 2009). Children start watching TV very early, often as early as 6 moths old, and up to the age of three, they already become “devoted viewers” (Zindović-Vukadinović, 1998: 110). Another illustrative example comes from the research Upbringing and media, which was conducted in 2006 under the mentoring of Gordana Zindovic, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of University in Belgrade. e survey was done by pedagogy students on a sample of 756 students of fourth and eight primary school grades (see: Nedeljković, 2006). e results show that, as anywhere else in the world, Belgrade (Serbia) children spend a lot of time using electronic media. Primary school students usually watch films, series, popular telenovelas and cartoons, and one third of school children spend time watching sports and music programmes. Only 15,7% children-respondents stated that they watch educational contents. e study shows that 26,9% respondents watch television four and more hours a day, which corresponds to the data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the USA. A research on the problem of media violence conducted in Slovenia among students of fourth and eighth primary school grades showed that television is the most attractive medium for students and that they mainly watch action, adventure and horror films (Pšunder i Cvek, 2011). In recent years, children spend more time in the internet environment, many of them too oen and for too long. A study conducted in Croatia, on a sample of 4000 students from grades 4 to 8 showed, among other things, that about 73% of the students have had some experience in the use of the Internet, about 56% students chat regularly, about 53% of students browse the Internet in search of interesting news and that more than a quarter of students have been exposed to different messages with sexual content (according to: Ristić et al., 2009). Today, the use of the Internet by young people cannot be considered separately from the very popular social networks. It can be proved by the basic results of a research (Jevtić et al., 2012) conducted in Niš (Serbia) in the period 2009-2011, on a sample of one thousand primary school students, regarding social and health problems that can arise due to excessive


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and improper use of Facebook. e Internet was used in 2009 by 70.9% of the students, and almost all of them (69.0%) stated that they were using Facebook, too. e figures are constantly increasing, which can be seen in the fact that 94.9% of primary school students were using the Internet in 2011. Once again, almost all of them (93.7%) stated that they were using Facebook (Jevtić et al., 2012 ). Another set of significant results from this study refers to the average number of hours that children of primary school age (from fourth to eighth grade) spend at the computer when using Facebook: from 40 minutes to 3 hours a day. e authors state that excessive use of Facebook and computers in general, can lead to a variety of social, psychological and health problems in children, such as alienation, separation from reality, creating specific types of addiction. To this they add the risk of abuse of personal profiles, personal data and pictures, and the risk of injury and more. e popularity of video games and their effects on children is steadily increasing. e previously mentioned study Upbringing and media of pedagogy students from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, it was found that 86.9% of the respondent students play video games, and that 21.3% students play video games for several hours every day, mostly at home and gaming clubs. About half of the students surveyed stated that they preferred to play action video games with elements of fighting, armed conflicts and explicit violence (Grand ef Auto, Counter Strike, Call of Duty - World at War, Mortal Kombat, etc.), and a much smaller percentage of respondents answered that their favourite video games were sports simulations, strategic games, adventures and logical-thinking video games. e most common reason for students’ playing video games is entertainment (77.2%), then excitement, while about 10% of the students said that they could learn something from video games. Despite the great importance of media in children’s lives and their great educational potential, research on the impact of media on children has mainly been prompted by the concern that media can have a negative impact on children’s behaviour. Authors usually try to find out how long children can bear exposure to media before experiencing their harmful effects and how we can improve their context and quality in order to adjust them to the development and health of the child (Lemish, 2008; Shaw & Wood, 2009). e largest and most comprehensive studies on media and children’s upbringing have focused on the impact of media3 use on children’s behaviour: whether the violence that a child sees every day on television and 3

In particular television programmes, films, video games, and since recently, the Internet social networks.

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in films or in which he/she is actively involved when playing video games encourages violent behaviour, whether advertisements prompt children to buy products advertised, what is the impact of media on the occurrence of sexual permissiveness, and vices like alcohol, smoking, gambling, various forms of addiction, etc. (see: Anderson et al., 2003; Huesmann et al., 2003; Lemish, 2008; Shaw & Wood, 2009; Small & Vorgan, 2011). Several hours of daily use of media also have an impact on an individual’s behaviour in terms of: “hyperactivity, inattention, depression and multitasking mania” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 117). In this paper we particularly analyze the results of research on the impact of violence from media contents on children’s behaviour. Numerous studies conducted in recent decades have shown that an increase in aggressive behaviour and severe violence in children may be associated with the development of electronic media, the media-related contents and the ways in which violence is presented in them (Zindović-Vukadinović, 1998). When it comes to the impact of media use on learning and children’s academic achievement, experts report that the main reason for the problem of an increasingly growing lack of concentration among children is their everyday, long-hour exposure to repetitive clips, assemblages, moving scenes, focus shiing from one object to another and sudden noises used in various media, which leads to the children’s constant need for continuous stimulation of that kind (Shaw & Wood, 2009). ey become “dependent on the stimulus, stunned by the flashing graphics and intense visual stimuli in quick succession” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 63). Resulting from an excessive use of media, this phenomenon is associated with many problems in the field of children’s cognitive skills and reduced learning capacities due to the difficulties that students experience trying to retain attention (Lemish, 2008). It is noted that the decrease in concentration has a negative impact on reading, writing and speaking skills in children. e analyses of changes caused by such excessive use of media on a social and emotional level have shown that such children most probably do not have many friends, that they are not happy at school, they do not get on well with their parents or oen get into trouble. ey are oen heard stating that they are bored, sad or unhappy (Shaw & Wood, 2009). e symptoms found in such children are: anxiety, depression, fear, panic, aggression and reluctantness for relationships with other people outside the virtual world. Recently, research has been focused on: the phenomenon of social networking, Internet match-making, the impact of media use on privacy, sensibility, communicative and social skills, their humanness and the like. Neurologists point out that the use of media has an impact on our neurological circuits that determine our mental status and our humanness:


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“self-awareness, creativity, social intuition and ability to feel empathy, trust, guilt, love, sadness and a whole range of complex emotions” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 172). With reference to the influence of media use on children’s health, numerous studies have focused on the correlation between the prolonged daily use of media and the consumption of unhealthy food (with high quantities of sugar and unhealthy fat), alcohol, cigarettes, etc. We have already mentioned that some authors state that excessive use of Facebook and computers in general can lead to various health problems in children “such as anxiety, insomnia, seeing impairments, spine problems, and immunity deficiency” (Jevtić et al., 2012: 41). e list can be extended by the fact that chronic Internet users are less physically active, oen obsolete and more oen prone to stress when engaged in simultaneous activities than those who rarely use technology (Small & Vorgan, 2011). Regarding the ever increasing use of computers, certain data confirm that there are more and more young people who are being treated for the new disease – computer (Internet, video game) addiction. e use of media can lead to “compulsive technological behaviour” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 76) which causes addiction and can be destructive. e addict becomes conditioned to compulsively seek excitement, to crave for it and re-experience it. In a study which analysed the problem of Internet addiction among students of a USA college, it turend out that more than 18% of students could be ranked among pathologic Internet users, and 58% of them said that excessive Internet use “distracted them from studying and regular school attendance and affected their average academic achievement” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 80). Children hospitalized for this kind of addiction oen neglect or even abandon school prior to hospitalisation, and due to the excessive time spent in playing network games and socialising via Internet, they undergo total alienation (Ristić et al., 2009).

Violence as a dominant mode of behaviour in certain media contents and its impact on children’s behaviour Numerous studies in the recent decades have lead to the conclusion that media can strongly affect the development of a person’s system of values and shape their behaviour. Special emphasis is placed on the negative effects of television (in particular film) violence on children’s behaviour, and in the recent years especially violence in video games. Countries with highly developed communication technologies were among the first to conduct such studies. e results show that watching violence can affect

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children in that it makes them: immune to the horrors of violence, accept violence as a way to solving problems, imitate violence that they see on television and identify with some of the characters, villains and/or their victims. Media campaignes fulfill commercial interests by showing contents which are typically watched, and oen opt for contents with violence placed in an attractive context. “From that point of view, anything that can be sold to a wider public is allowed; anything that fawns upon the taste of wide masses and gives them an opportunity of identification, justification and catharsis“ (Zindović-Vukadinović, 1998: 109). Authors engaged in finding connections between television-generated violence and children’s behaviour oen use in their writings the data from the report of the American Institute of Pediatrics according the which up to the age of eighteen, an average American child sees only on television about 200,000 violent scenes, which is a data certainly not to be taken as a normative value, but should rather serve the purpose of revealing how far this phenomenon can reach4. Longitudinal studies have shown that a typical child in the USA watches television 28 hours a week and up to the age of eleven sees around 8,000 murders (Huesmann et al., 2003). For the same reason, to point to the importance and the urgency of dealing with this problem, Craig Anderson draws attention to the data found in a meta-analysis (Rosenthal, 1986; prema: Anderson, 2001) according to which violent video game effect sizes are larger than the effect of second-hand tobacco smoke on lung cancer, the effect of lead exposure to I.Q. scores in children, and calcium intake on bone mass. Anderson points out that these are problems that people understand, problems big enough to be important and to make us concerned. Barbara Wilson, professor and Head of the Department of Speech Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that it is not the quantity of violence which children see on television, especially in films, that matters, but rather the way in which violence is presented. e context of violence, such as the nature of the violent person and the justification for the violence greatly influence the effects of mediashown violence on children (Wilson, 1993). Film characters who get money, popularity and awards for the violent behaviour in a film may encourage aggressive behaviour and its imitation by children. When violence is not punished children tend to imitate it more 4

Especially bearing in mind that violence can be defined in different ways: 1) in a narrow sense – premeditated physical aggression in order to inflict (relatively serious) injury or inconvenience to another person on property; 2) in a broader sense – verbal or psychological offence; 3) still broader senses – unintentional injury; violence of a weaker to a stronger person; violence in the animal world; among animated characters, etc.


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oen, and unfortunately, most of violence in films goes unpunished, and the villain oen even gets rewarded for their anti-social behaviour. An extensive study conducted in the USA, which followed and analysed violence on television for three years, showed that such violence is oen rewarded and rarely has negative consequences. Villains get unpunished in three quarters of all violent scenes on television, in almost half of the scenes of violence the victim’s injuries or suffering are not even shown, and criticism of such behaviour or consideration of non-violent options for solving the problem is present in less than 5% of programmes containing violence (Federman, 1998). Harmful effects of violence are also increasing due to the fact that in many cases violence is presented as justified. Films oen present a hero who is forced into violence, because it is his job to fight against bad guys, so his violent behaviour, no matter how brutal, is considered as justified. Most of television violence is committed by the actual hero. is study has shown that the good guys’ aggression is rarely punished and that bad guys are punished in 62.0% of cases. Power Rangers, „Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, as well as many war and action films teach children that the good guys’ violence is not only justified, but also a heroic act. e aggression exhibited by the Terminator and other similar heroes is reasonable and gives him the status of a person who can solve all problems (Zindović-Vukadinović, 1998). Wilson points out that realistically shown violence is oen imitated. e effect of realistic violence is more harmful for older than for younger children, because they are able to distinguish reality from fantasy, and thus likely to be more influenced by films such as „e Karate Kid” or „Rocky”, while younger children react in the same way to both reality and fantasy. e effect of television violence on children’s behaviour is also largely determined by the children’s understanding of the characters. Children oen closely watch and imitate characters who are similar to them; so the more problematic films are the ones that present younger bullies than adults. Younger children are usually attracted to children-actors (like Macaulay Culkin in „Home Alone 2”), and the older once are more influenced by teenage and adult characters. Younger children are more focused on the external appearance of the hero, while the older ones are able to take into account the character’s personality, can distinguish reality from fantasy and draw more accurate conclusions about the causes and consequences of violent behaviour (Wilson, 1993). It has been noted that in some film scenes violence is pleasurable. Actor Clint Eastwood considers the violence in the film “Dirty Harry” so much fun that he encourages people to provoke him, claiming that violence brightens his day (“Go ahead, make my day”). In addition, the effect

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of watching violent scenes is determined by the fact that violence is oen presented as amusing. e aforementioned research on the problem of media violence conducted in Slovenia showed that students mention fun as the main reason for watching media contents with violent context and eventually become less sensitive due to frequent exposure to media violence (Pšunder i Cvek, 2011). Once very popular cartoons (“Tom and Jerry”, “e Road Runner”, “Foghorn Leghorn”, and others), oen showed as their funniest scenes those with hitting someone on the head, etc. Cartoons that are now being shown on our television (“Pokémon”, “Digimon”, “Ben 10” ...) abound in scenes of violence and science fiction. e contents of the above cartoons show that “the action takes place in violent battles between monsters that look alien and fight their way to winning the best heroes, i.e. creatures, for themselves” (Milenković, 2008: 170). Of course, most children will not become violent by watching violence in films and on television, but it can affect them in other ways: it can increase their intimidation (the victim effect), influence them to accept violence as a normal thing (insensitivity effect) or arouse the desire for watching more violence (the appetite effect). George Gerbner, former professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania (e Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania), believed that, combined, these effects lead to the creation of the “mean world syndrome” the recognition that the society we live in scary and criminalised , cruel and dangerous. According to him, such fears on a personal lead to alienation and isolation (Gerbner, 1990). What may develop in children is fear, threat, mistrust, a strong feeling of vulnerability and depression (Lemish, 2008). Violence presented as fun supports the understanding of the world as violent and evil. Watching violence increases fear in a child of becoming a victim of violence, which leads to the development of introvert behaviour and distrust towards others. Influential pediatrician, Berry Brazelton, professor at Harvard University, wrote that screaming, breaking and disorganised hyperactivity was a very frequent mode of behaviour in preschool children in the period following watching television (according to: Kohn 1998). e research team led by professor Rowell Huesmann of the University of Michigan included 557 children aged 6 to 10 years who grew up in the Chicago territory in a longitudinal study conducted from 1977 to1992. e study showed that the identification of children with aggressive television characters, as well as real violence shown on TV can lead to aggressive behaviour in their future. is relationship was found even in the cases of controlling the impact of socioeconomic status, intellectual abilities and a whole range of family factors (Huesmann et al., 2003). e authors state


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that it is quite likely that those children who liked to watch shows that contained violence within the specified period, will (at the age of 30) become serious offenders, aggressive when they drink and more prone to physical punishment of their children than those who did not like to watch violence on television at that age. ey say that children of this age who watch violence on television several hours a day show a greater propensity for violence once they become teenagers. As already stated, recent research has focused more intensively on the behavioural effects of many-hour daily use of violent video games. In a detailed study of this phenomenon, Anderson et al. reported that children spend more and more time playing video games, that many of these games contain violence and that their negative impact is stronger than the violence shown on television, because the children who play these games are active participants (and not just mere observers), which increases the risk of their becoming aggressive themselves. e authors of this study say: ”e impact of exposure to violent video games has not been studied as extensively as the impact of exposure to TV or movie violence; however, on the whole, the results reported for video games to date are very similar to those obtained in the investigations of TV and movie violence“ (Anderson et al. 2003: 90). Some authors point out that chronic gaming can leave a negative impact on the body and the brain and chronic video game players (who play them for hours each day) tend to develop the videogaming brain and become insensitive to the real world around them: “recent research suggests that it is the intensity of violent graphics in games, rather than the amount of violent content, that can significantly affect brain function and cause aggressive behaviour” (Small & Vorgan, 2011: 61). In addition, playing video games on a daily basis can lead to psychological dependence, reduced social interaction outside the players’ circle, neglecting schoolwork and negative effects on children’s health (impaired vision, spine and bones deformities long due to long sitting hours, etc.).

Instead of a conclusion e interpretation of the negative impact of media on children’s behaviour is oversimplified in that it sees the child as having a passive attitude towards media and according to which children’s brains are blank slates to be freely scribbled on by media (Kohn 1998; Lemish 2008). More recent researchers (especially the representatives of cultural studies developed in the European theoretical tradition) tend to think that viewers, even the youngest ones, are active in the selection of media contents and that they shape

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their environment just as it shapes them. In contact with media children “bring with themselves and apply the knowledge and experience which they have acquired, their needs and feelings, their opinions that were built in a complex process of socialisation, as well as their own special tastes and preferences” (Lemish, 2008: 111). In these studies, the focus is on the meanings that children form by their intensive use of media during a long period of time and under given social circumstances. In that sense, the question is no longer How do media affect the child?, but How does the child use the media? One must not ignore the fact that media will affect different children in different ways, depending on their age, gender, personality traits, patterns of family interaction, the presence of adults, the media contents that they use and the way they use them (Kohn, 1998). Media contents are just one aspect that should be taken into account when studying the impact of media on children’s upbringing. One must not ignore the interaction between the child’s personality, the environment and the choice of contents that the child makes, because they all determine the effects of violence shown (Zindović-Vukadinović, 1998). Understanding media depends on the intellectual capacities of a child, its socio-cultural environment, the child’s experience and family (Zindović-Vukadinović 1997). e influence of media on encouraging anti-social behaviour is intertwined with a large number of other mediating factors (such as the reallife circumstances, child’s family heredity and background, the education system and social values, the kind of satisfaction that a child experiences by using media, etc.). It is also dependent on a specific cultural context (Lemish, 2008). Speaking about the analyses of the impact of media violence, the author emphasizes that one should bear in mind the level of violence present in the environment and points to a global study by UNESCO, “in which it was concluded that 51 percent of children in the areas with high rates of violence (such as, for example, regions which recently experienced warfare”...”and some economically poor environments under the impact of crime) want to be like some of their favourite, aggressive, television models, as opposed to 37 percent of children from an environment with a low rate of violence” (according to: Lemish 2008: 125). Media should not be too readily labelled as good or bad, but their impact must be viewed in the context of use (the type of media content - the child’s personality - the specific situation). For example, the oen cited criticism that it is better for children to read books than watch television makes no sense unless one takes into account the quality of the book being read and the quality of the television programmes being watched. In fact, the comparison is most commonly made between high quality books (lit-


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erary classics) and very bad television programmes (entertaining contents with scenes of violence, etc..). In addition, it should be borne in mind that watching less television will not make children read more books (Kohn, 1998). Analyzing the relevant literature, we have found two main directions in the effort to minimize the negative effects of inadequate and excessive use of media on children’s behaviour: 1. Initiatives related to increasing the quality of media contents for children and protection of children by banning the sale of inappropriate and potentially harmful media contents to children, as well as a variety of strategies to control the display of television contents that are inappropriate and potentially harmful to children. Such initiatives are usually aimed at “limiting children’s exposure to contents that are considered unsuitable for their age, their emotional and cognitive skills, as well as the contents that present a social environment based on social values and behaviours that can have a negative impact on children” (Lemish, 2008: 300). 2. Encouraging media literacy of parents, teachers and children within the education system (synonymous terms in use are: media education, media competences, critical ability to use the media, etc. ). ese terms relate to: the ability to analyse and evaluate media messages, context and culture in which the media are used, the proposals of pedagogical tools designed for teachers, educational guidance for parents and the like (Lemish, 2008). Media education of children should be accompanied by the development of humanity, empathy, improvement of social and communication skills, as well as curbing the desire for instant gratification of needs encouraged by media (Small & Vorgan, 2011). From the above said, we accentuate the fact that in the modern world, electronic media (especially the new technologies) have become an indispensable part of every aspect of children’s lives (from fun and entertainment to education), which has led to the necessity of mastering high-tech skills and possibilities of using their potentials on the one hand, and the need for developing media literacy (of both children and adults) on the other, in order to prevent numerous potential risks and negative impact of excessive and uncritical use of media on the behaviour of children, their academic achievement, social skills, sensitivity, and health.

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