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      How and Why Parents Guide the Media Use of Young Children

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          Abstract

          Children use electronic screens at ever younger ages, but there is still little empirical research on how and why parents mediate this media use. In line with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, we explored whether children’s media skills and media activities, next to parents’ attitudes about media for children, and several child and parent-family characteristics, predicted parental mediation practices. Furthermore, we investigated children’s use and ownership of electronic screens in the bedroom in relationship to the child’s media skills. Data from an online survey among 896 Dutch parents with young children (0–7 years) showed that children’s use and ownership of TV, game consoles, computers and touchscreens, primarily depended on their media skills and age, not on parent’s attitudes about media for children. Only touchscreens were used more often by children, when parents perceived media as helpful in providing moments of rest for the child. In line with former studies, parents consistently applied co-use, supervision, active mediation, restrictive mediation, and monitoring, depending on positive and negative attitudes about media. The child’s media skills and media activities, however, had stronger relationships with parental mediation styles, whereas age was not related. Canonical discriminant analysis, finally, captured how the five mediation strategies varied among infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, and early childhood children, predominantly as a result of children’s media skills, and media activities, i.e., playing educational games and passive entertainment use.

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          Most cited references32

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          Does Father Care Mean Fathers Share?: A Comparison of How Mothers and Fathers in Intact Families Spend Time with Children

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            Developing a scale to assess three styles of television mediation: “Instructive mediation,” “restrictive mediation,” and “social coviewing”

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              Digital childhood: electronic media and technology use among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

              The objectives of this study were to describe media access and use among US children aged 0 to 6, to assess how many young children fall within the American Academy of Pediatrics media-use guidelines, to identify demographic and family factors predicting American Academy of Pediatrics media-use guideline adherence, and to assess the relation of guideline adherence to reading and playing outdoors. Data from a representative sample of parents of children aged 0 to 6 (N = 1051) in 2005 were used. Descriptive analyses, logistic regression, and multivariate analyses of covariance were used as appropriate. On a typical day, 75% of children watched television and 32% watched videos/DVDs, for approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes, on average. New media are also making inroads with young children: 27% of 5- to 6-year-olds used a computer (for 50 minutes on average) on a typical day. Many young children (one fifth of 0- to 2-year-olds and more than one third of 3- to 6-year-olds) also have a television in their bedroom. The most common reason given was that it frees up other televisions in the house so that other family members can watch their own shows (54%). The majority of children aged 3 to 6 fell within the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, but 70% of 0- to 2-year-olds did not. This study is the first to provide comprehensive information regarding the extent of media use among young children in the United States. These children are growing up in a media-saturated environment with almost universal access to television, and a striking number have a television in their bedroom. Media and technology are here to stay and are virtually guaranteed to play an ever-increasing role in daily life, even among the very young. Additional research on their developmental impact is crucial to public health.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +31 (0)10 408 9115 , nikken@eshcc.eur.nl
                Journal
                J Child Fam Stud
                J Child Fam Stud
                Journal of Child and Family Studies
                Springer US (New York )
                1062-1024
                1573-2843
                24 February 2015
                24 February 2015
                2015
                : 24
                : 11
                : 3423-3435
                Affiliations
                [ ]Erasmus University Rotterdam, M8-43, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
                [ ]Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
                Article
                144
                10.1007/s10826-015-0144-4
                4598347
                26472932
                017e9497-bcac-410f-8ed1-945d0d5f38ee
                © The Author(s) 2015

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.

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                Original Paper
                Custom metadata
                © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

                Family & Child studies
                young children,television,educational gaming,touchscreens,parental mediation,media skills,child development

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