Media literacy

SHOTRON, the non-profit organization, whose purpose is media literacy of children in Romania, has recently made a study on the influence of media on children's play manner. The study results show, among other facts, that children spend more than twice the same time in front of the screen, that they do in parks or playgrounds. Aggressive cartoons determine negative reactions of nursery school and school age children - unprepared in understanding and interpret media signals.

The study also shows that parents aren't interested almost at all by this fact, allowing their children to watch cartoons in order to keep them quiet. Children spend an average of 4 hours/day period with their parents, so the TV set and the PC play a more and more important role in children's education.    

"The fact that cartoons have a low intellectual level, besides being violent and aggressive- not mentioning estetically deformed is very serious" says Iulia Radu, the President of SHOTRON and the study's conceiver. Children "step ages" in their interest regarding cartoons - younger age children watching cartoon conceived to target older age children. Regardless if they are watching cartoons on TV, they are surfing the Web, they are playing computer games or they are reading a magazine, children are assaulted by messages of our consumers' society:commercials, advertising, hidden messages. Even if not all mssages are targeting children, they have to know how to interpret them and how to conciously chose what's right for them" says Iulia Radu, President of SHOTRON.