Preferences of Visual Language and Symbols in the Digital Age of Youth Bozena Supsakova Comenius University, Faculty of Education, Bratislava, Slovakia
Abstract The new media and social networks have changed the common ways of communication, education and living style as a whole in a radical way. We have studied one of the aspects of the new impact of media, and that is the impact on value orientation of children and youth. In the presentation we intend to analyse child’s pictures and to document how they reflect the current value orientation of children, world of their experiences and actual life experiences through the most frequent symbols. We have studied what (who) the children are inspired and motivated by, or who they spend the most time with. In this connection we were interested if and how these symbols (and symbolism) are represented in child’s pictures. A new element which we have observed at young authors is preference of graphic symbols to verbal expression. It is a result of commencement of new technologies (e-mails, chat, sms messaging) which is liked mostly by young people. These forms of mutual contact, with regard to technological nature, use short expressions through abbreviations even signs (it saves time, fees for connection and transfer of messages and alike), and thereby makes the used terminology expressly poorer – there is a lack of interjections, extended sentences and similar. The paper focused on interpretation and understanding of daily experiences of youth with symbols and elements of visual art. On the basis of long-time research provide a summary of the system of values of children and young generation in Slovakia. The paper also analyses influence of television, internet, advertising, pc games on the system of values and interests of youth and children.
1. Introduction One of the aspects of this era is mass usage of the new media mostly by younger generation. Scientific researches claim that mostly children and the youth are very strongly bound to new media. Resulting from these findings, with an effort to enrich the knowledge base, we have studied one of the aspects of the new impact of media, and that is the impact on value orientation of children and youth. Our intent was to analyse child’s pictures and to document how
they reflect the current value orientation of children, world of their experiences and actual life experiences through the most frequent symbols. We have studied what (who) the children are inspired and motivated by, or who they spend the most time with. In this connection we were interested if and how these symbols (and symbolism) are represented in child’s pictures.
2. Interpretation The first question was to find out whether the children. Pictures made by children, as current fantasy and reality of child’s world, which are part of our long-term research, suggest how deep the modern media have stricken child’s subconscious, how they (de)form their imagination and value orientation. From this point of view we have not been surprised for a long time by the fact that those are not any classical children’s plays and games in the nature or in the school yard which had dominated in child’s image speeches not long ago. The up-todate “games and toys“, which children match their leisure time with the most frequently, are computers, the internet and play-station consoles. The following most frequent preferences have resulted from the analysis of artistic expression of different age categories of children: symbolic portraying of a computer, video recorder connected with the TV, usually linear, in the form of rectangles, squares or other angular polygons, in blue, black or green colour. The verbal commentary by authors covers it all: “I have a computer, printer, keyboard and a mouse at my grandma’s. I am playing a computer game.” Drawing has become only a challenge to sit at the “drawn” table and play. In many cases it is subjective graphical expression when the author does not find it important to portray even themselves. They and their authorship (name) are highlighted by bold letters. Similarly, another drawing which is very inventive, rich in colour, full of life and joy, portrays an interior where everybody has their own place and function: “This is a socket (part for connection of electrical receiver to the net), electric cables, adapter, screen, light, it is me, set on the remote control. I am playing the more-compact joysticks”. Child’s pictures document that within the visual repertoire, apart from the traditional signs and symbols, the young authors have gradually
discovered new ones which portray new quality of vision, the way of communication (with computer) and culture. At the same time they show that children confronted with the computer are at this age interested in the fact if the computer is alive, if it is thinking and feeling.
2.1. Influence of TV Series and Films Nowadays many television channels are oriented especially towards child’s viewer. They produce drawn and played TV series and films. Needless to say that many cartoons are edifying, they positively influence development of a young man and their imagination. Some of them, however, have a negative impact but they have been programmed so that children literally “swallow” them without break all days, one TV series after another. They accept the out-of-focus reality offered by TV and they live in an illusory world where the unreal TV serial “laws” govern. In fact, many cartoons are “a gift basket” from which the toys and objects related to them fall down to the market. It is necessary to state that part of the children portray the main characters from the tales, mostly only from the new, modern ones. However, many children like to be inspired by cartoon magazines, current tales or TV series and film, frequently supplied on the DVD: the TV film Home Alone, part II, Lost in New York, Harry Potter, The Simpsons and others has become a theme for children portraying as a main character. Tom and Jerry – two animal characters, famous from the TV screen choose children to be their friends as main heroes of the tale who they eventually identify themselves with. In other pictures, the favourite characters from the cartoons come to life, which are mixed with their own images. As the most original way of graphic portraying that symbolizes a favourite friend from the tale we find the picture portraying the TV screen itself. Medial environment and living style influence young man’s thinking and as a child gradually enters the symbolic cultural stream.
2.2. Advertisement and Children Nowadays the television and advertisement are very significant opinion making subjects. Advertisement encourages young people to lead consumer way of life (to have is more than to be); it tries to persuade them about material values, about new products and their need, satisfaction. It develops the innate “thirst for to have” in a young person, as a basic material value a lot sooner than other, more important values for life (for example spiritual needs), start to develop. It has been proved that the most credulous in this are children up to 10 years of age. Although their pictures have their individual expression, the portrayed things or stories are fully influenced by media and advertisement, and immediately at first sight recognizable: an eightyear-old boy has portrayed a different symbol of the consumer society using his own fantasy – a hamburger, candies “...which you can buy in the shop”. A five-year-old boy has expressed his joy over drinking lemonade from a big green bottle, or a Smiley face holding a bottle with the title Coca-Cola. The title “union” is the name of an insurance company and from its usage we can assume that the ten-year-old boy has deduced an advertisement for insurance company from the topic title. In another case it was a mobile phone with external headphones and handsfree kit, inspired by the advertisement for mobile phones and mobile operator. Also here is a tendency to describe pictures with the title “Enjoy your life”, mostly in cases if the drawing is not imaginative, original and creative enough.
Figure 2. Inspiration by Coca – Cola advertisement “Enjoy your life”
2.3. Impact of New Technologies
Figure 1. Inspiration by the Simpsons - painting on a wall
A new element which we have observed at young authors is preference of graphic symbols to verbal expression. It is a result of commencement of new technologies (e-mails, chat, sms messaging) which is liked mostly by young people. These forms of mutual contact, with regard to technological nature, use short expressions through abbreviations even signs (it saves time, fees for connection and transfer
of messages and alike), and thereby makes the used terminology expressly poorer – there is a lack of interjections, extended sentences and similar. Instead of that, there are graphic symbols in the form of Smiley faces through which the feelings of joy, grief or surprise are expressed in a special way. To express the feeling of joy through art, children used the symbols of candies, gifts and alike very often. Many of them were happy with the symbol of Smiley face; today very frequent in short messages and any electronic messages. Children have explained that the Smiley face is ok because it makes communication faster, saves written and spoken word. And most of all it is understandable for everyone, especially when appearing at the end of a sentence. In the drawn form it looks nice, it is a symbol of positive message, mood, energy, similarly like on the display of mobile phone.
3. Visual Symbol, Differences
Similarities
girls
% 30 25
boys
27,8
24,2 21,2 22,2
22,2
21,2
20 12,1 11,1
15 10 5
11,2
6,1 6,1
6,1
5,5 3
0
0
0
and
Bigger part of young people from our research has been especially inspired by advertisement and has literally used the advertising symbols. Among the most frequently used were the advertising drinks, then the smiling Smiley faces, smiling young people with big eyes, titles “Enjoy your life” or other advertising slogans. Artistic expression of another group of children which was, however, represented in minority, was influenced by media only a little. Although we can find some characters from the cartoons in the pictures, the authors have “put” them in a different world and made them up according to their fantasy. The smallest group was created by children whose creation was not influenced by advertisement at all. Their joy of life is connected with an event, a family celebration or food and drink, experiences, strong emotions (sweets, presents, flowers and animals). However, the most frequently they portray a human figure with a smile or accompanied by other people (parents or friends) or animals (Figure 3, 4).
Figure 3. Gender preferences in the usage of symbols
Figure 4. Usage of symbols according to age
3.1. Colour as a Phenomenon Our Colour is the most important phenomenon in fine art expression and reflects of world. If we want to achieve final result all is allowed. Colour can represent light, enjoy, fan but dramatic event and tragedy also. Colour is mostly invisible building stone of picture composition, or is point of sentence. We intend to concentrate on their meaning and their application in social interaction and communications. It means the context of the environment, in which colours, as significant symbols, are formed not only
by themselves, but also as a phenomenon of perception of present world. Our research indicates that yellow is the most characteristic colour for expression of positive feelings (preferred by 30 percent of children). Red, brown and green colours got nearly the same preferences (preferred by 17 - 20 percent of children, on average). Black colour obtained the lowest preference, only 5 percent of children identified themselves with black colour for expression of positive emotions (Figure 5)
% 31,2 23,7 12,5 11,3 15 6,3
% 30
yellow 22,5
red 17,5
brown
16,3
green
8,7
blue black
5
Figure 5. Preferred colours (in percentages) and expressed emotions (a sample of 4-6 years old). Positive experienced emotions - joy and happiness
Children find black colour to be the most typical for expression of negative emotions. Up to one third of children indicate such preference. The second one prioritised for expression of negative emotions by up to one fourth of children is blue colour. Other colours obtained relatively equal preferences, around 10 percent (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Preferred colours (in percentages) and expressed emotions (a sample of 4-6 years old). Negative experienced emotions - anger and sadness
Children did not have strong preferences for expression of mixed emotions (fear and admiration). In fact, all colours were equally present in children’s creative expression, when they aimed to express both positive and negative emotions (Figure 7).
%
black
13,75 17,5
blue
20
green
20
brown red yellow
12,5 13,75
Figure 7. Mixed feelings of a short-term nature, both positive and negative - fear, admiration
Our conclusion is that most children identify feelings of happiness mainly with yellow and red colours; sadness is identified mainly with cold (blue) colours and anger with black colour. In general children prefer yellow (28 percent), green (28 percent) and blue (24 percent) colours. These
dominant colours suggest positive emotions to 40 percent of children, mixed feelings to another 40 percent and negative emotions to the remaining 20 percent of children. Younger children prefer red and green colours, which fill them with positive emotions (40 percent), or mixed feelings, such as admiration and sadness (47 percent). Our research also compared conformity of children’s favourite colours with their emotions. We came to the conclusion that for 22 percent of respondents their favourite colours accord with joy, for another 22 percent their favourite colours accord with admiration and/or surprise, for 10 percent it accords with anger and for 8 percent it accords with fear (for details see the Figure 8).
joy 22
fear
%
admiration 22
8 10
20
anger
grief 18 happiness
Figure 8. Conformity of children´s favourite colors with their emotions (in percentages)
In general, our conclusion is that emotional stimuli and sensory perception influence colourfulness of children’s creative expression and their attitude towards particular colours. Children’s drawings and their interpretation of heard / seen story or their made-up stories supported our conclusion. Children mostly use their favourite colours to express both positive and negative emotions. Although, the conclusion is that there are some stronger preferences, anyway. After all, yellow is dominant in expressing positive emotions and black is dominant for negative emotions. If we represented emotions on a scale, from positive to negative ones, then yellow has a downward trend and black tends to be on the rise. In most cases, children used black and blue to express negative emotions (sorrow and fear). Green and brown referred mostly to middle course, mainly for expression of mixed feelings. As for frequency of colours, children have a special liking for blue colour (nature is the most often creative motif, which means drawing water and the sky). When comparing colour preferences of girls vs. boys, we did not observe any significant
differences; anyway, girls prefer yellow and blue while boys prefer green and blue. That indicates that boys more often have a special liking for cold colours than girls.
4. New Possibilities for Visual Recording The report presents partial result from our research (also within VEGA 1/0158/08 Visual symbol, similarities and differences in visual figurative expression of children and youth). The acquired knowledge allow us to accept the following generalization: children and young people today work on computer daily, nearly all of them have a mobile phone and the internet is a source of their entertainment, information and means of communication. Every day they collect new experiences, make real and virtual contacts. There are new possibilities for visual recording of reality but also for (self) presentation here. At the same time there is an opportunity to enter the world in which what is the most important are the sound brand marks, good image and fashion trends. Young people prefer a favourite advertisement, media, brand mark things, adrenalin activities, they have courageous plans and ambitions, they can travel, they want to see and know a lot. They want to be carefree, happy, and single and they want to have money. It is evident that the world of the present day young generation is different, their opportunities are being extended and they are developing. Nowadays there is a publicly placed question if and to what extent the visual media, and thus the visual pictures and impressions, can change or influence the child’s brain structure and learning. Nevertheless, some effects of the influence are shown and therefore we may state that part of the television programmes, video programmes and action computer games “manipulate” artificially with the brain and influence the behaviour patterns. That is done with the intention to draw certain level of attention through visual and audible perturbations and such changes as rapid and dynamic change of scene, action in the story or stunt effects and eventually, to induce neurological passivity and disturb balance. Now there are several ways how to force the brain to be activated in the required and exactly stated direction. The moment of surprise, sharp colours, rapid movement and quick sound is enough for a child. All in all, current advertisement (concept of “massaging the brains”) takes this into consideration, as well as television programmes for children and adults. Exactly these teach the habits how to hold attention and concentration of receiver through certain perturbation effects. To form and influence receiver’s behaviour (at adults the most often shopping) by ongoing repetition of certain words and slogans. According to our survey, approximately 50 percent of 9 to 11 year old children
said they watched TV programmes, including advertisement daily. They prefer visual perception to auditory or emotional. Approximately 90 percent of children are fascinated most of all by colourfulness of TV picture, after that it is movement and spoken word. Therefore their replies read: “I do not have to read.” “I do not have to walk in the street.” “I do not have to watch if I do not feel like, I only listen.” In this regard, the Canadian medial theoretician and sociologist Herbert Marshall McLuhan frequently expressed himself to the issues of the task and influence of the up-to-date media on man, especially on children. In some cases he had very categorical opinions. In his view, all the media themselves and irrespective of the mission they send have a significant influence on man and society. “...only a few brains can survive the intellectual torture of our educational system. The mosaic picture of the TV screen creates the profoundly pulling present and simultaneity in children’s lives, and under their influence they despise difficult visual aims of the traditional education as something unreal and inconsiderable. Another vital problem is that too much is taught at our schools by traditional analytical method: and we are in the age of information overloading. The only way how to reach the state that the school is not a prison without grilles is to start with completely new techniques and values.” (McLuhan, p. 231)
• Parents have a hindered or limited possibility to check the activities of children which they are through the media involved in and whom they actually meet in the anonymous cyber room (chatting in virtual communities, online computer games on internet).
5. Conclusion
• New, technologically oriented media, which are built on visualization, suppress one strong, so far natural human need – the need to read. Research has clearly confirmed that the present-day generation of children and youth reads considerably less, which is evident in weaker fantasy, lower ability to imagine. With current predominance of electronic media, a very strong impulse will have to come to force children to read – the last time it happened when the novel about a young magician Harry Potter had appeared.
Nowadays young people are interested more about socio-cultural context, culture and heritage, messages, media, society and community, identity, relationships and so on. Cultural together with sociocultural background suggested values preferences of youth. Our research has expressly proven that the modern media and information communication technologies have rather significant influence on the changing value orientation of children and youth. It is natural that their inner world reflects reality which they are confronted with. The values they assume might not be qualified as only positive or only negative. They are simply different from those of the preceding generation. Based on our knowledge we may state some generalizations: • New media offer new, stronger experience from visualization, they are attractive for young people also because they mediate action, offer untraditional picture perturbation, graphic portraying, they integrate more mediums (multimedia). • Individual types of media significantly influence cognitive activity and taste of children and youth. They extend the possibilities for knowledge, however, on the other hand, children orientate harder in the offer of programmes without help from the adults.
• New types of television, multimedia programmes (computer games) or music production bring new idols and new heroes for children and youth. Taking over new models of behaviour or identifying with these idols does not have to be only positive. Very frequently we observe increase of aggression at young people as a reflexion of alien models. • Virtualisation is coming due to the internet. New 3D virtual worlds, for example Second Life, offer the unique and unknown socialization in virtual world for young people. They can play new, better life roles, they can be better and more successful in such a life. The long-term impact of such virtual world influence on the child’s psyche, sensible and emotional side has not been scientifically documented so far. • As a result of new media, mostly mobile phone (sms messaging) and social networks (You Tube, Facebook, etc.), the way of communication among young people is also changing – they put much bigger emphasis on abbreviations, schematic or simplified expressions.
• The structure of leisure time spending has been changed – it happens at the expense of cultural and kinetic activities. It has resulted in lower reader’s (and not only) and physical ability of young generation, lower interest in culture and kinetic activities. Surveys have proved that the media cannot be the only subject which considerably influences the young generation. Greater influence by family, school and cultural institutions is irreplaceable. It has been indicated that today it is a lot more necessary to create room for the whole-society discourse where creativity, authenticity and uniqueness of man would be considered the most valuable features. Therefore, the discourse should create room for dialogue, exchange of opinions and explaining, so that it influences a lot more and positively the intellect and
emotional side. We consider the fact that school is irreplaceable within the structure of educational process of the same importance. The task of such subjects like medial education, arts or ethical education, where there is emphasis on critical thinking and group critical analysis of creation, model of game, interdisciplinary approaches, opinion independence and alike. Besides other things, these subjects offer a good platform for creation of value orientation of young generation. These may eventually become action makers mostly in the field of social changes.
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