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It is known that children with special educational needs (i.e., with physical and or cognitive disabilities, and or conduct or social-emotional disorders) are more at risk for problems resulting from media use at home. Yet, how professionals in special needs education (SNE) deal with these media related problems by their students at school has received little attention. To fill this gap 19 professionals affiliated to 3 primary SNEschools in the Netherlands were interviewed. At these SNE-schools that addressed children between 4 to 12 years old requiring additional support and adaptive pedagogical methods we explored (a) which online risks and benefits professionals encounter from the kind of media their students use, (b) which children are deemed most vulnerable, (c) how professionals deal with students' online problems when they manifest themselves in school, and (d) what professionals need to address these situations effectively. Qualitative content analysis using Boeije's approach of open, axial, and selective coding was applied to the interview data and revealed that, in accordance with former research, the interviewed professionals mainly saw problems like compulsive gaming, watching and playing (too) violent movies and games, and online arguing and bullying. To a lesser extent their SNE-students also received or sent sexual messages or materials. These problems were typically associated with the students' gender, social-emotional or cognitive limitations and conduct disorders. Moreover, professionals also mentioned that the absence of consistent and involved parenting at home highly contributed to children's problematic media use. Professionals found it difficult to solve or prevent problemrelated media use that often had started outside of the school. They lacked knowledge about children and media-effects, appropriate media-literacy lessons, structural support from the schools' management, and knowledge how to involve parents. A customized approach that goes beyond the school borders apparently is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With children using digital media at ever younger ages, media-education becomes a pressing issue for parents. As there is hardly any research on how parents guide the online activities of toddlers and young children an internet-survey was held among 792 Dutch parents of children aged between 2 and 12 years. Factor analysis revealed that for the internet, parents partly use the same strategies they also apply for television and video games: "co-use", "active mediation", and "restrictive mediation". In addition, they also utilise new strategies: "supervision" and "technical safety guidance". Mediation was mainly predicted by the child's age and online behaviour (e.g., gaming, social networking), as well as by the number of computers in the home and the parents' gender, education and computer/internet skills. Finally, parents also use more mediation when they expect that the internet has a positive effect and particularly when they believe that it has a negative impact.

Through an Internet survey of 536 parent-child dyads, the authors researched which mediation strategies parents used to regulate videogaming by their children (8-18 years). Factor analyses revealed that both parents and children distinguished three types of parental mediation: (1) "restrictive mediation", (2) "active mediation", and (3) "co-playing". These strategies are comparable with mediation types that were established in research about television. Comparing the parents' and children's reports it was found that both groups had highly congruent views about the application of mediation. Parental mediation of videogaming was most strongly predicted by the child's age and the parents's game behavior. Furthermore, parents applied more restrictive and active mediation when they feared negative behavioral effects and more often co-played with their children when they expected positive social-emotional effects of gaming. (Contains 6 tables and 1 note.)

This study investigated the standards children between 9 and 12 years of age use to evaluate the quality of four types of children's programs: news, educational, dramatic, and cartoons. The quality standards children considered most important were comprehensibility and aesthetic quality. Additional standards were entertainment, involvement, credibility, innocuousness, restfulness, thought provocation, and presence of role models. (Author/AEF)

Based on a time-lag model, this study tested for changes in young children's (1–6 years) home access and use of digital media in the 2012–2018 period as well as in their parents' views on such media. What it found was that in only a few years the digital devices available to children have become more mobile (tablets and smartphones), more accessible, and more numerous in these children's bedrooms, especially in single-parent households. Also, on average children have strongly increased their daily media use—up to 102 minutes. This is especially true for both younger children (3 years or less, plus 30 minutes) and children in middle to highly educated households (plus 25 minutes). Our findings support the complementary media adoption theory more than the displacement theory. Over the years parents have tended more and more to use digital media as 'babysitters', while they also found it increasingly difficult to stop their children from using such media, which may have major implications for parenting support activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes study conducted with Dutch preschool and elementary school students to determine their perception of reality when watching Sesame Street on television. Variables studied include age, communication skills, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and data are analyzed using factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. (13 references) (LRW)