Young children’s media lives - Parents’ and teachers’ views about mediation and education of the use of media by children aged 6 to 8 years.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions that parents and primary school teachers have of the media usage of children between the ages of 6 and 8, and in what ways these two primary caregivers mediate and educate the children’s media usage. The research is qualitative in nature and involves 18 interviews with children between the ages of 6 and 8 years old, one of their parents and their primary school teacher. The goal is to gather personal accounts of children’s media usage and the perceptions of their two primary caregivers. The results are presented in six triads, involving a child, their mother and primary school teacher. In general, children within this age group use a myriad of different media on a daily basis, with the most popular forms being books, the television, radio and game console. All the parents included in this study are very aware of their children’s media usage, but some appear to engage in acts of parental mediation more than others. Here, restrictive mediation of access, content-specific restrictive mediation and supervision are the most often used styles of parental mediation. Most parents believe they share the responsibility to teach their children media education with their primary school teachers and the teachers included in this study echo this sentiment. Teachers think that having a Digiboard present in the classroom and using it during lessons, already helps their pupils to familiarize with digital forms of media. Additionally, teachers feel using images and videos in their lessons can be enriching and a valuable tool to their teaching methods.