MIKE study: The smartphone is cool. Gaming is cooler.
Around half of primary school children have their own mobile phone, most of them a smartphone. The age differences are large: a quarter of 6 to 9-year-olds have their own mobile phone, almost two thirds of 10 to 11-year-olds and four fifths of 12 to 13-year-olds. The proportion is higher among only children and children without a Swiss parent. Children use their mobile phones to play games, watch online videos, listen to music and exchange messages.
Although digital media are being used more and more frequently, children between the ages of 6 and 13 prefer to play offline, do sports and meet up with friends outside the digital world. «Despite digitalisation, traditional media are still used most frequently: More than three quarters of children watch TV, listen to music or read books at least once a week,» says Gregor Waller, co-head of the study and co-author of the MIKE study.
Instead of sleeping on your mobile phone
However, the fascination with mobile phones is also accompanied by risks: The study shows that around one in three children with their own mobile phone uses it at least once a week when they should actually be sleeping. Another finding: one in twenty children - and one in five children of foreign origin - has a TV set in their room. Rules are therefore important to minimise negative effects on well-being. The Youth and Media Platform recommends completely avoiding screens in the children's room.
YouTube is the favourite app of 6 to 13-year-olds, ahead of WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat. Although the minimum age is not set by law in Switzerland, many apps require parental consent. WhatsApp in particular has been used much more frequently since the last MIKE study in 2015. Currently, 55 per cent of middle school children use Whatsapp at least once a week. In general, girls tend to favour communication apps, while boys tend to prefer game apps. Two thirds of all children game at least once a week and their favourite games are Super Mario, Minecraft, FIFA and Clash Royale.
Another worrying finding is that one in ten middle school children have been harassed online at least once. According to the JAMES study from 2016, one in four 12 to 19-year-olds have even been affected.
Many parents set rules
Parents primarily see media as a large, diverse, easily accessible and important source of information that can promote their children's education. Theyare both critical and optimistic about digital media, as they are aware that it also harbours certain risks, particularly in relation to games and social networks.
Parents take an increasingly positive view of internet use as their children get older. Parents become active in the face of the challenges. Most of them set rules on the duration of use and over 90 per cent of parents are aware of the age recommendations for cinema and TV films. Nevertheless, it would make sense to pay more attention to the content and talk to children about the reasons why they are using the content in question. Parents' media behaviour influences children's media use. Parents therefore have an important role model function.
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MIKE STUDY 2017
The MIKE study examines the media usage behaviour of primary school pupils in Switzerland on a representative basis. MIKE stands for Media, Interaction, Children, Parents. For the 2017 study, over 1,000 children aged between six and thirteen and over 600 parents in the three major language regions of Switzerland were surveyed. The MIKE study was conducted by the ZHAW's Media Psychology department and made possible by the support of the Jacobs Foundation and Jugend und Medien - Nationale Plattform zur Förderung von Medienkompetenzen. The MIKE Study 2017 is the second edition of the Swiss Children and Media Study after 2015.