Abstract
"Early media education can protect against excessive media use" is the conclusion drawn in a press release of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs from the current study "Excessive Internet Use in Families" (Kammerl et al. 2012). Apart from the question of whether this can actually be deduced from the data, however, the report refers to the attention given to the upcoming generation in the context of media use, and especially to the expectations directed at family and public forms of media accompaniment for children as they grow up. Here, two topics come together, new media and childhood, which have received special attention in the public debates of recent years. Against this background, this article focuses on the goals and focal points of media education in childhood, the associated addressing of family and childhood in the context of media use and education in the family and public context, and asks about the underlying normative orientations of media education in childhood. This is presented and discussed in the examination of discourses on childhood and media, programmes of education in childhood and the educational responsibility of parents, as well as on the basis of the concretisation of educational goals in current educational programmes.
