Browsing by Author "Virtanen, Sanna"

This study compiles research findings on impact of media on infants and toddlers. At the time of writing there were no published research papers on medias impact on young children in Finland. Even on international level the research is quite limited. Nevertheless, the media is present on children’s lives from birth. The purpose of this study was to investigate what known impacts media has on infants and toddlers. The presumption in this study was that media has both positive and negative impact on development of infants and toddlers. The research was conducted using systematic literature review. The final material consisted of fourteen studies. Twelve of these studies were academic papers with two being Pro gradu theses. The material was reviewed using theory driven content analysis. Based on the analysis the research results were then assembled to meaningful groups. Impact of television and individual shows on infants and toddlers stood up from the material. The results were classified into three groups that were impact of television on cognitive and language development of children, impact of background television on development of children and impact of television on parent-child interaction. The results varied in whether the child was impacted by the length of watching television / being exposed to background television or an individual show. However especially the background television was seen resulting in lower linguistic expression and interaction in both parent and child. Active role of parent was found to have positive connection in children television viewing and development. Based on this study it is possible that media has impact on children. However, the relatively low number of published research and conflicting results show that it is still early to establish whether the impact is negative or positive. Further studies on this subject are needed.