Parenting the touchscreen natives – Dilemma with guidelines, content, and context

Abstract

The amount of touch screen devices and applications designed for toddlers and children is expanding rapidly. Children’s exposure to media has never been as deep as it is today. The growing trend of using digital content and touch-screen devices from an early age has created a new generation of Digital Native, called the Touch Screen Native.

Designing and purchasing digital content for young children is increasing and expanding field of business. Consumers in this new field of media, e.g. parents, are in a difficult situation, as they should be able to make a decision on both what is good and suitable digital content for young children and what is good design in general in this context. At the same time parents are being told to control or avoid screen time.

The role of parents as co-viewers, co-listeners, active media partners and digital content managers is significant. Managing screen time and digital content and participating the media usage are essential parts of digital parenting, and difficult task for most of the parents. There is a need for realistic, evidence based guide-lines and information to suit the challenges of hectic lifestyle and digital parenting. Based on my research I cre-ated guidelines for parents to deal with challenges of contemporary digital parenting.

Qualitative studies and data regarding on the young children’s media usage and exposure already exist, but studies related to interactive touch screen media usage are only beginning to emerge, and very few of them has commented on qualitative side of the topic. The commonness of young children’s media usage has been studied but the lack of inclusive data on touch screen device use among children and need for new research methods is reported in several context. To collect qualitative data on the media usage I organized 15 semi-structured inter-views for parents and custodians.

Developing and supporting qualitative research and methods such as observation and interviews, would give the anticipated understanding of how media is being used among families with small children in everyday life. This information is valuable for many stakeholders from parents to designers, and it can be used for designing media educational legislation and initiatives. Ever changing and rapidly developing media landscape requires up to date research methods and expertise from research organizations.

My thesis argues that the media competence and the media usage habits of parents are in essential role regarding young children’s media exposure. I demonstrate that the pass-back effect plays a significant role in the formation of the screen time, and it is important to recognize what is the context and content regarding on young children’s media usage. I also state that due to an evolving and widening variety of media content designed especially for the touch-screen device the term screen time needs to be adjusted and updated.