Children’s Access to Indecent Content in New Media

Abstract

This research aims to study problems of the new media usage of Thai children and youth, both hardware usage (smartphone, tablet, and notebook), and software usage (internet, social media, and online game), especially their accessibility to indecent contents such as sexual explicit content, language, violence and gambling. The research applied a mixed method including: a survey of 633 children and youth, age between 6-24 years old, in Bangkok selected by multi-stage sampling; and a focus group of 21 parents selected by purposive sampling. Quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were analyzed by using content analysis. The findings showed that smart phone was the most popular new media among children and youth. Their average time spending on new media was 4-6 hours per day, while a large number of kids spend up to 10 hours per day. YouTube was the most popular social media among children and youth in every age. While online game was the most popular among young children, Facebook was the most popular among youth. The main purposes of utilizing new media were for entertaining, followed by chatting with friends and searching information. Most of the kids reported they can accidently access to indecent contents, especially sexual content. Also, a focus group of parents revealed that it became more difficult to control their children’s usage of new media while they grew up. Some children severely addicted to new media, especially online games. Another problem was the parents have less media and information literacy, which made it more difficult to protect their children.