Children’s Drawing in the Context of the Visual Language of New Media. Research Report

Abstract

The present time is a period of dynamic development of new media, which should be accompanied by a more profound reflection over their impact on human development. The research on the impact of new media on children seems to be important as children become increasingly exposed to the virtual world, at the same time exploring reality. The time and commitment with which they "absorb" media images is bound to take its toll on a child’s psyche, which manifests itself in the imaging. The article presents the research on drawing activity of children from 3 to 12 years old in the context of changes occurring in these activities brought about by the visual language of new media. The fact that this extensive research has been carried out over an interval of 10 years (in 2004 I carried out an analysis of 4180 drawings of children and youth aged 3 to 18 years, while in the study repeated in 2014 I examined 2134 drawings of children aged 3 to 12 years), makes it possible to compare the results of the two studies, and also to confront them with descriptions of children's drawings found in the specialized literature. In this way, the obtained characteristics may be referred to the visual language used to construct the new media image. Qualitative and quantitative analyses, as well as a comparison of the results, have allowed not only changes in the children’s drawing activities to be determined, but also indicate the direction of these changes. For the research, it was also important to find arguments in favour of media education with reference to visual education and defined as training, that pertains to the entire contemporary iconosphere.