The Role of Parents for Developing Digital Literacy of 0-5 Year Olds

Introduction

The relevance and context of this study is influenced by the fact that the number of children who use the internet before they reach 8 years of age has grown significantly in Europe and in Latvia as well, which is a new social and technological phenomenon. Latvia is among those countries with the highest usage of the internet and social media and it has become a significant part of children’s everyday lives. The lives of children nowadays differ greatly from those of their parents. It is often the case that parents have the same amount of incompetence or are even more incompetent than their children when it comes to digital literacy. There is a fraction of parents who accept these challenges and understand that they need to develop their competence to help their children to improve their digital media usage competence, however, there is a fraction of parents who believe that children should not be using any digital media until they reach school-age.

As J.McPakeet all. (2013) has pointed out, that almost anything that can be found in the child’s residence can be considered as digital technologies – starting with a TV, computer, tablet and ending with children’s toys that can talk, eat, move, etc. Some of these digital technologies are intended for the everyday use of children, that are intended as toys, however in this study the emphasis is on digital media that serve as a medium. Using digital media providing some sort of information, it is important not only to analyse the skill to choose what technology to utilize, but also to regard the aspects of media competence, which includes analysis of information, evaluation and creation of new products. The impact of digital media can be manifested in different levels of social systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), however this article focuses on the child’s individual and micro-system’s (family) level where the child gains its first experience. Regardless that there are authors who have already analysed the use of digital media in a family environment (Plowman et al., 2008; Stephen et al., 2013), analysed their educational impact on children’s development (Carrington & Robinson, 2009; Ito, et al 2010), these studies are carried out on children who, mostly, are older than 5 years old. Traditionally, it is believed that digital media usage skills need to be developed when the children start school and start to utilize digital media in the learning process, however research shows that internet users are becoming younger everyday, concluding that, in Europe, children aged 3-4 can be considered regular digital technology users (Holloway et all., 2013). In Europe a group of researchers is working on a study “Digital competence of children aged 0-8”, some findings have been published concluding that parents tend to talk to their school-aged children, trusting what they are saying, rather than talking to or controlling their pre-school aged children. Parent believe that only older children should be controlled and that young children are not considered a risk group, because they assume that they would inform their parents if and when they would encounter any kind of risk. Most commonly parents associate digital media risks with possibilities of damaging the devices themselves, possible eyesight problems (Dias et all., 2016). Clearly that is a very narrow and one sided view of the problems that a child could encounter in the digital media environment, which is why it is vital to determine the current situation in Latvia. Research shows that intensive use of digital technologies is the norm in a lot of families (Holloway et al., 2013), children acquire digital media usage skills very quickly, independently and successfully (Frechette and Williams, 2015), and they become active digital media users. However, the purpose of the usage of these technologies is not always clear and parents often lack pedagogical competence to guide the development of their children’s digital media usage skills, assuming that the child is its own knowledge constructor.