A Study on the Differences between Parents' Media Education Experience and Necessity in Children's YouTube Use Patterns
Authors:   The Korea Associantion For Early Childhood Education Administration, Jeon JIn-Ho 
Published: October 2022

This study analyzed the differences in the educational experience and necessity of children's media YouTube usage and parents' education. The purpose of this study is to prepare a media guidance plan for young children in a digital environment. This study is an analysis study using data from the 2020 Children's Media Use Survey by the Korea Press Foundation during the COVID-19 period. As a result of the study, first, as for the devices using YouTube, smartphones accounted for the most at 41.6%, followed by tablets, smart TVs, computers, and others. It was found that on average, children spend more than an hour on YouTube per day between 100 and 130 minutes per week. On the other hand, on the weekend, on average, people watched YouTube for more than 2 hours, between 120-130 minutes. Second, it was found that the YouTube content watched during a week of infants was watched more in the daycare center in the cartoon/animation category, but the toy materials and games were watched more in the kindergarten. Meanwhile, as a result of analyzing the educational contents watched for a week, nursery rhymes/music accounted for the most at 18.6%, followed by fairy tales, English education, nature education, and sociality education. Third, the reason for letting infants watch YouTube was not to be disturbed by the child (23.9%) the most, followed by stress/diversion, compensation, acquisition of new information, and the child being choked up. Fourth, education experience and necessity of parental education The Internet showed the highest number of places to get help for media use guidance (25.7%). In terms of media education, it was found that children received more media education in kindergarten than in daycare center. It was found that more education was received in the non-adoptive parental cohabitation group than in the adoptive-parent cohabiting group.
And in terms of the benefits of media education, it was shown that the media education received by parents, early childhood guidance, and children in kindergarten was more beneficial than daycare.
Necessity of Media Education Overall, all respondents answered that they needed it as around 4.0.
Media education required for young children showed the highest level of self-regulation ability at 36.4%, followed by understanding of positive/negative effects, information utilization method, and information discrimination ability. As a research suggestion, the guidelines for prevention of media overdependence in infants and young children should provide specific guidelines for children's media use along with information on cognitive development, physical development, and emotional development that match the characteristics of infants and young children according to the number of months. In addition, it is absolutely necessary to develop a curriculum that includes the harmful effects of digital media and the advantages and disadvantages of media according to the stage of children's development in the professional training course for educational institutions (kindergarten) and childcare institutions (daycare centers).