Children’s Media Literacy Education in the Reception of Television Advertising: An Examination of the Family’s Role in Children’s Media Literacy Education

Abstract

Television is one of the media whose content children encounter, particularly during the earliest stages of their lives. It contributes to the child’s socialization and has increasingly come to compete with the family in performing its educational function. Television can reach children at an early age and with considerable intensity through the various programs it broadcasts, including advertising. Such advertising helps to implant promotional messages in children’s minds. Given the sensitivity of this stage of human development, media literacy education is essential to guide and rationalize children’s reception of such content, with advertising among its most significant forms. Television advertising, through promotional spots for goods and services, carries messages that contain ideas, values, and behaviors which children receive, are drawn to, accept, and may seek to imitate. Media literacy education is therefore an important means of raising children’s awareness, accompanying them, and guiding them so that they may benefit from the positive aspects of such content while avoiding its negative effects. Numerous media, sociological, and psychological studies have demonstrated the influence of television advertising on children's upbringing, particularly through its effects on children’s behavior and the values they acquire during socialization. Television has consequently come to rival the family in educating the child, instilling cultural and social values that may either correspond to or conflict withsocietal values. In addition to creating desires and persuading viewers to purchase goods or obtain services, television advertising plays a major role in changing habits and presenting moral models and social values that may not accord with those of the society in which the child lives. Although advertising is primarily oriented toward directing individuals toward consumption, its content is also grounded in shifts in values and morals. It transmits values through sound, image, video, music, and audiovisual effects, all of which operate as persuasive appeals intended to influence the consumer. Since children constitute a vulnerable group requiring care and guidance, and since television content, including both programs and advertising, may carry negative values and ideas that conflict with those prevailing in society and may affect children’s psychological, physical, health-related, and cognitive development, media literacy education emerges as an essential tool. Its role centers on teaching the individual, and the child in particular, how to engage consciously with media and communication technologies, while developing critical thinking and learning skills in support of sound socialization. The family in which the child grows up is the first institution to undertake this role. As the primary nucleus that embraces children and as the environment in which they spend most of their time, particularly during the early stages of life, the family contributes significantly to their socialization. It therefore bears a major responsibility for their media literacy education by guiding them toward positive, conscious engagement with television content, programs, and advertising messages, as well as the ideas and information they convey. This responsibility falls primarily upon parents and guardians, who are entrusted with caring for children and ensuring their education and socialization. It is therefore necessary for the family to be aware of advertising content, to pay attention to media literacy education, and to rely upon it in raising children, in order to benefit from the positive aspects of television advertising while avoiding its negative effects and risks. Hence, this study sheds light on the relationship between the child and television advertising content, the nature of its influence on the child’s personality, socialization and behavior, and the role of media literacy education as both a concept and an important tool for guiding and teaching children to engage consciously with such advertising content. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of the family in this regard, especially in rationalizing children’s media needs and protecting them from the risks of media, particularly television and television advertising.