Structures for Screens: Longitudinal Associations Between Parental Media Rules and Problematic Media Use in Early Childhood

Abstract

Media use is increasingly becoming an important facet of early childhood, and while professional organizations and researchers have attempted to present guidelines to parents to help them structure their children’s media use, many parents either are not aware of these guidelines or struggle to effectively implement them into their children’s daily routine. This research aimed to examine what rules parents of young children are implementing to structure their children’s media use and how specific media rules affect the development of children’s problematic media use (an early indicator of media dependence) longitudinally from ages 2 to 4 (three time points, each 1 year apart) in a sample of n = 435 children. We found that more parents have rules around their child’s TV use than tablet use when children are around age 2 1/2 years old, and that a sizable minority of parents ( n = 45; 10.30%) do not allow their child to use tablets at this same age. There was no relationship between media rules and problematic media use at Time 2. However, parents who did not allow their child to use tablets at Time 1 had lower levels of child problematic media use at Time 3, implying that the rules parents set around young children’s use of tablets and other personal media devices may be impactful in protecting children from the development of problematic media use.