Overview and challenges
Situation We are witnessing a sea change in the way children are viewed by society, from being seen as the property of adults to being seen as individuals with their own rights and with their own worth to contribute. This attitudinal shift is making it harder to exploit children, to neglect them, to abuse them and to ignore them. Nonetheless, developing awareness of child rights and encouraging behaviour that respects them is an ongoing project. It involves advocacy at every level of society and partnerships with communities, governments, academics, politicians, children and young people, the private sector and the media. This advocacy takes many forms. At the policy level it means working with decision makers for better legislation and a more child-friendly policy environment. Recent successes have included the coming into force of the Child Protection Act, which extends widespread protection to children, and improvements in the way that justice officials, including the police, deal with children in conflict with the law. At the community level, it means making sure that families are aware of child rights and adjust their behavior to ensure the full physical, emotional and mental development of their children. Children’s issues also deserve extensive coverage in the media to make sure that difficult problems are not ignored. In print, on radio and on television, UNICEF encourages debate about government policy and social attitudes to children. A further aim is to highlight achievements for children and by children. It is also important to encourage the media to use its considerable power for good. For example, some 95 per cent of households in Thailand now contain a television. The messages it conveys have a powerful effect on social attitudes.
They also have a powerful effect on children, who make up a significant, but often ignored, proportion of the viewing public. Good children’s programming informs as well as entertains. It can teach children about their rights and how to protect them; and it can warn young people about the dangers of HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and other risky behaviour in a manner that they find accessible and credible. The pattern of media comsumption in Thailand has slowly changed during the past decades. Television reaches some 95 per cent of all households, with the least penetration in remote mountainous areas and the southernmost provinces. Radio is now listened to by only 43 per cent of people, although it is still popular among teens and young adults. Many of the 10 per cent of those who use the internet are children and young people. There are no significant gender differences in access, but internet use is heavily concentrated in and other urban areas. Media commentators and social critics periodically decry the negative influence of the media on children and young people, but evidence is far from clear cut. Child development experts maintain that lack of supervision is the real issue, and that appropriately supervised internet and television use may be beneficial. In 2003, the government issued recommendations to television stations that 15 per cent of primetime programming be child and family oriented.
Key facts • The media are still relatively free but ownership is becoming concentrated in fewer hands
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