Interested to find out more about media literacy and its status in Croatian society? What are the policy documents and existing research that tackle this topic? If you are interested to find out more, then continue to read down below! We bring you a series of articles analyzing different documents and statistics on the national level! The analysis was created within the project “Media and information literacy for climate change and environmental topics” funded by Erasmus+ Programme.
Welcome to Part 6 of our series “Media literacy in Croatia: short analysis”!
In this part of the series, we analyse the research conducted by The institution of the Ombudsman for Children, “How we fulfill children’s rights in Croatia: opinions and attitudes of children and youth in 2009 and 2023”.
This research was conducted as a part of the programme on prevention from addiction to the Internet and cyber bullying. The research that was conducted in 2009 showed that young people consider addiction to the Internet as one of the main problems of young people in Croatia. There were 516 children and young people who participated in this research in 2023 to compare the results with the findings in 2009. There were 263 children and 253 adolescents who took part in the research.
In 2009, about 45% of the respondents considered addiction to alcohol, smoking and drugs as one of the main problems of young people in Croatia. In 2023, only 25% of them said the same. Nowadays, they consider addiction to the Internet and social media, and cyber bullying as main problems of young people.
Therefore, the research recommends strengthening media literacy of children and youth with the purpose of prevention of addiction to the Internet and cyber bullying. As well as ensuring alternative activities which are interesting and available to young people to ensure quality free time.
The research also showed that around 45% of young people spend 3 to 5 hours a day using the Internet, mainly social media and different apps for communication, such as WhatsApp, Viber or Snapchat. A total of 99% of children use social media, and more than half of them access social media at least 10 times a day.
Compared to 2009, young people in 2023 watch TV rarely, and they are unhappy with the choice of the content and the format. They state that there are not enough programmes for youth, and almost half of them stated that the media depicts young people with too much prejudice and stereotypes.
Although the respondents claim that they do not want to watch violent content, research shows that they largely watch content which is not dedicated to them, including movies, series and reality shows through which they are actually exposed to violence in the media. That’s why the research reminds of the obligation of the media content providers to categorise their content to inform viewers about the potentially harmful content. It also reminds that it is the responsibility of the parents to protect their children from premature exposure to violence and inappropriate TV content.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
If you are a youth worker, you can use these research results to think about interventions with young people, but also use them on the advocacy level to change things within your policy context.
INTERESTED IN PREVIOUS ARTICLES?
Part 1 dealing with Croatian laws can be found HERE.
Part 2 dealing with ethical codes can be found HERE.
Part 3 dealing with the National Youth Programme can be found HERE.
Part 4 dealing with the formal educational curriculum can be found HERE.
Part 5 dealing with already existing research results of media literacy can be found HERE.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
