Media, parent-student relationships in the context of media literacy: Examining attitudes and behaviors of middle school students and their parents in relation to the use of television and internet

Television and internet, two important media, have many negative effects on physical, psycho-social and cognive development of youth who do not have media literacy skills. To overcome those negative effects, in Turkey, middle school students have started to take the media literacy course in 2007-8 education year, as an elective course, professional meetings were organized and decisions were made to teach people importance of media literacy. When the literature was examined, it is seen that there is not an inventory and much research related to students? and parents? attitudes and behaviors toward these media. In order to fill this gap at least a little bit, the researcher developed Internet and Television Attitude and Behaviors Inventory-Student [ITABI-S] and Internet and Television Attitude and Behaviors Inventory-Parent [ITABI-P] inventories. He completed both content and construct validity of those scales. Cronbach's Alpha reliability of each section is as follows: ITABI-S second section is .825; ITABI-S third section is .886; ITABI-P second section is .868; ITABI-P third section is .896. The researcher examined middle school students? usage of television and internet, the social problems they faced, their parents? awareness level related to internet and television, and the supervision and restrictions they had for their children. The research involved 1,302 their children attending grades 6 to 8 at 1 private and 11 public middle schools in Central Kutahya and 1,302 of their parents (Total = 2604 participants). The researcher used percentage, frequency, t-Test, ANOVA and X2 to analyze the data. The findings of the research show that many of the students? usage of internet and television is intense. However, those students and their parents are found to have a lack of media literacy skills. These students are under the risk of negative effects of internet and television. The findings show that students demonstrated the following problems: uncontrolled internet and television usage, freely sharing personal information in social media, internet addiction, difficulty in seeking help from parents, believing all information found on internet, encountering internet fraud, internet gossipping about himself-herself and so on. The parents demonstrated the following problems: lack of internet usage skills, lack of ability to supervise their children on internet, misusage of internet and television as a punishment or reward, lack of quality parent-child sharing time, being faced with media-influenced problems in their children (such as moral collapse, irregular eating habits, unconscious consumption, violence) and so on. Keywords: Media Literacy, Television, Internet, Media Education, Social Sciences