Research media consumption

Striking a Balance: the control of children's media consumption The BBC, the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) and the Independent Television Commission (ITC) have today published the results of research undertaken between November and December 2001 that looked at the mechanismsparents use to control their children's media consumption. The study included interviews with 36 parents, carers and children from London, Solihull, Newcastle, Cardiff and Glasgow from homes with and without access to multi-channel television and the Internet. In addition, over 500 parents of children aged 5-16 took part in a survey. The survey revealed that with the continuing rapid changes in home entertainment many parents are facing new challenges in exercising control over what their children see, seeking to strike a balance between an open, trusting relationship with their children, while also wishing to protectthem from harm. They are concerned over issues of sex, violence and bad language, but acknowledge that context and treatment have a bearing on these issues.
In striving to strike a balance parents use various informal controls to regulate their viewing. This involves keeping an eye on their children's media consumption and the programmes and channels they watch, limiting the time children are allowed to watch television, random checks and discussions about programme content with children.The research reveals parents feel these methods ensure that TV content is generally "safe".
The Watershed remains a highly valued mechanism in regulating children's television viewing, although there is concern about the pre-Watershed content of some genres, particularly some of the themes contained in the storylines of soaps and police/crime dramas.The study showed that television is considered to be effectively regulated by external bodies and the prospect of stronger regulation is unwelcome. Parents said they would like to have better information about programme content to help them regulate their children's viewing. Their main sources of information are the television listings magazines or pre-broadcast on-air announcements before the commencement of programmes.
Electronic programme guides and film/video classifications were the best received of all tools available. Parents indicated that they would like to see more consistent and more widely disseminated information about age suitability of programmes in television listings. This they felt would give them the flexibility to decide their children's viewing based on the maturity of their child and their own value system. The Internet as a medium raises more concerns and uncertainties than television for parents. Parents are worried because of the vastness of the Internet. Media publicity had made them cautious about sites featuring pornography and paedophilia, and about chat rooms. Even when they were confident in their children's ability to regulate their own use of the Internet, they still worried about accidental exposure. Despite their concerns and the availability of control mechanisms, in practice parents did very little to control their children's Internet usage.
Most control, as with television, was informal - such as placing the computer where it was visible or only allowing the parent to switch on the computer.Parents felt this was the most effective way of balancing their anxieties with the educational potential of the Internet. Most parents felt that the current technical tools available for controlling their children's use of the Internet were too complex to install and lacked simple age categorisation. They wanted simple labelling and easy to use filtering systems. The research shows that many parents can and want to play an active role in working with their children to develop their media literacy skills and help them avoid inappropriate content.
It indicates that finding new ways of ensuring parents and other users can make informed choices about what access will be a challenge for broadcasters, content providers and regulators alike.