Abstract
Digital media technologies have been widely accessible in the modern household for almost a decade. Coronavirus pandemic has also shown that these technologies have become indispensable in daily lives. During the pandemic lockdown, many parents have worked remotely and children have been attending distance education. Thus, these technologies are commonly used by all family members in this period. This study aimed to investigate preschoolers' screen use, and parental views, and approaches related to their children's digital media use during the pandemic. It was asked to parents the questions on screen time, content, and type of devices children use in digital media. Additionally, they answered some questions on their views, concerns, and approaches to digital risks and opportunities for their children. The findings show that screen time was over the recommended limit for most preschoolers, whereas content remained similar to times before the pandemic. Maternal work status was related to how parents approached some risks or learning opportunities in regulating their children's digital media use.
Top11.1 Introduction
Nowadays, children are born into digital media-rich homes and have access to a variety of digital devices. Before the age of four, a vast majority of children who have access to those new technologies use them at least once (Kabali et al., 2015). According to a recent report (Ofcom, 2019), twenty-four percent of children aged 3 to 4 have their own tablet devices, and this rate reaches 37% by the age of five. Besides, longitudinal research has shown that as children grow older they spend more time in front of digital screens (Cadoret et al., 2018). Mueller (2019) reported that eighty percent of preschoolers participated in the study exceeded the screen time recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (2016), and used digital media devices on average for 2 to 3 hours per day. However, limiting the time to 30 minutes a day was positively associated with psychosocial and intellectual development (McNeill et al., 2019).
Parents have a direct influence on young children’s digital media use, screen time and content. Family-related factors such as socioeconomic status (Määttä et al., 2017), unemployment (Covolo et al., 2019), parental education and age (Connell et al., 2015), number of older children in the household (Covolo et al., 2019; Nikken & de Haan, 2015) were associated with children’s digital media use. Further, preschoolers from chaotic and unpredictable family environments spent more hours alone in front of the digital screens (Emond & Benjamin-Neelon, 2019). Younger children’s screen time was positively related to parental screen time (Jago et al., 2013; Kaya, 2017; Lauricella et al., 2015; Lusted & Joffe, 2018; Nikken, 2017; Wong et al., 2019). Because children model parents’ digital attitudes and behaviors (Nikken, 2017), higher parental screen time predicted higher screen time for their children. The presence of older siblings (Nikken & de Haan, 2015; Siibak & Nevski, 2019) influenced the duration and content of digital media consumed by younger children. Similarly, the higher number of digital screens in crowded family households resulted in the precipitated access of younger children to digital devices not configured for them (Chaudron, 2015; Kabali et al., 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Digital Risks: Potential risks that children may encounter due to unsupervised use of digital screens (e.g., obesity, sleep problems, learning/achievement problems, pornographic contents, etc.)
Digital Opportunities: Opportunities offered by digital technologies to children such as entertainment, socialization, and learning
Digital Parenting: The efforts of parents to reduce potential risks and enhance opportunities for their children in the digital environment.
Screen Time: Time children spend in front of digital screens such as computers, tablets, smartphones, or TVs.
Digital Devices: Technological media devices including TV, smart phone, tablet, notebook, game console or desktop computers.
Parental Concern: In this study defined as parents’ approaches and views towards their children's screen use.
Parental Mediation: Behaviors and strategies parents utilized to mediate children’s screen use.