In order to find out what has to be considered for future developments of youth media protection, children and young people, parents and pedagogues were asked for their individual perspectives.
What do children and parents know about youth media protection? What risks and challenges do they see when using online media? And how do they deal with it?
As commissioned by the Voluntary Self-Monitoring by Multimedia Providers (FSM), the Hans-Bredow-Institut and the JFF – Institut für Medienpädagogik in Forschung und Praxis [JFF - Institute for Media Research and Media Education] developed a reliable and valid standardised survey instrument that gathers significant aspects of youth media protection concerning knowledge, attitude and action regarding and bundles them into a so-called “index for youth media protection”. This can be analysed in further studies and interpreted regarding changes.
Project Findings
Presentation of the Findings on 7 November 2017 on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the FSM in Berlin
Prof. Dr. Uwe Hasebrink stated during the
presentation of the findings (in the video from minute 12:52) on 7 November 2017 that there are still great uncertainties about how technical youth protection can be applied. Moreover, technology alone is not enough, as the experts emphasised. "The crucial thing is for parents to talk to their children, to make sure they understand what is happening," said Uwe Hasebrink. Conversations could achieve more than technical systems or rules.
Hasebrink advocated further development of the system for the protection of minors from harmful media: "With the Youth Media Protection Index, there is now a solid empirical basis. We must discuss the opportunities and risks of online communication again, adapt the system for the protection of minors from harmful media to the new findings and develop measures to promote it."
Project Description
Research so far only focused on mostly specific risks and security measures. Thereby, they could only give a selective insight into the perspective of individual actors. The objective of this project was to create a current, knowledge-based and repeatable basis for the further development of youth media protection. In this regard, the perspectives of different relevant actors (children and young people, parents, pedagogues) were analysed and combined. By looking at this topic from different perspectives, we were able to show current developments comprehensively concerning youth media protection. Additionally, we could also compare and interrelate the answers of the three groups involved with each other.
The overall objective was to present well-founded empirical evidence of knowledge, attitudes and procedures of children and young people, their parents as well as pedagogical experts regarding youth media protection. By using a standardised survey instrument, aspects of knowledge, attitude and action were gathered bundled into in a comprehensive “index for youth protection” and presented in form of an index for youth media protection.
In a first step, a standardised survey with families was carried out. By interviewing a child each, aged nine to 16 years, and the child’s parent, we obtained results from both perspectives. The responses of parents and their children could be put into relation to each other, whereby conclusions on the interactions of both perspectives were possible.
Based on existing research as well as empirical evidence from the interviews with parents and children, we developed a survey instrument for the interviews with educational experts in a second step, which will be used for an explorative study.
Our objective was the development of a reliable and valid standardised survey instrument that gathers significant aspects of youth media protection concerning knowledge, attitude and action regarding and bundles them into a so-called “index for youth media protection”. This can be analysed in further studies and interpreted regarding changes.
