Research of the correlation between the time that children between 2-6 years spend in front of screen and parent attitudes and aggressive behavior

In this study, the correlation between the time spent by children between the ages of 2-6 in front of the screen and their parents' attitudes and aggressive behaviors was examined. The samples of the study were 242 parents who have a child going to kindergarten and their children from different provinces and districts of Turkey. In the research, these components were used: "Media Survey for Children" prepared by the researcher, which aims to determine demographic characteristics, the time spent by children in front of the screen and the programs they watched, "Parental Attitude Scale" which aims to determine parents' attitudes towards their children, "Aggression Scale for Children/Parent Form" aimed at detecting the aggression levels of children. The "SPSS for Windows 22.0" program was used for data analysis. In order to examine the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the scales, correlation and regression analysis, unpaired t-test and one-way analysis of variance used for independent samples according to the demographic characteristics of the participants were applied. According to the results, there was found a positively medium-level relationship between "the time spent in front of the screen" and "authoritative parent attitude" and a negatively very low level correlation was found between "democratic parent attitude" and children's "time spent in front of the screen". A very low level positive correlation was found between "overprotective parent attitude" and children's "time spent in front of the screen" and a low level positive correlation was found between "permissive parent attitude" and children's "time spent in front of the screen". There was not any significant relation found between sub-dimensions of children's "time spent in front of the screen" and "aggression scores." There was found a positively medium level significant relation between "authoritative parent attitude" and "verbal aggression" scores. Besides its been found that authoritarian parental attitude clarifies the 10,8 percent of the time children spent in front of the screen. According to the unpaired t test, it was found that boys' scores of physical aggression towards objects and animals, provoked and not provoked, were higher than girls. Meanwhile, it was concluded that the time spent in front of the screen did not differ according to the educational status, economic status and gender of the parents. Keywords: Parental Attitude, Aggressive Behavior, Visual Media, Mass Media, Child