Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, 3939 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RQ, United Kingdom.
Infant Behav Dev. 2021 May;63:101551. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101551. Epub 2021 Mar 8.
Digital media are increasingly pervasive in the lives of young children. This increase in the availability of digital media might have long-run implications for child development; however, it is too soon to definitively conclude the direction of effects. In part due to this lack of certainty, leading health organizations have chosen to make different recommendations to parents of young children: Many international health organizations (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization) recommend very young children be limited to under one hour of screen time daily, whereas others (e.g., Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) have intentionally opted not to make recommendations about specific limits. These guidelines might contribute to parents in different countries making meaningfully different choices about children's use of digital media. Using a sample of N = 303 families recruited in Cambridgeshire, England and New York City prior to the birth of couples' first child, we explore predictors of digital media use across the first two years of life. Data were collected when children were 4, 14, and 24 months of age. Results of latent growth curve analyses show that generally, children spend more time engaging with digital media as they grow older; however, growth mixture models reveal most children fit into one of two classes: One group of children (High Media Users; 52.2 %) engages with a substantial amount of digital media, whereas the other (Low Media Users; 48.8 %) engages with relatively little. Children in the US were approximately 30 % more likely to be in the Low Media Users group and there were no differences in group membership on the basis of parents' psychosocial wellbeing. While these differences could be due to a number of factors, these findings may reflect the power of pediatric recommendations.
数字媒体在幼儿生活中越来越普及。数字媒体可用性的增加可能对儿童发展有长期影响；然而，要确定影响的方向还为时过早。部分由于这种不确定性，主要的健康组织选择向幼儿的父母提出不同的建议：许多国际健康组织（如美国儿科学会、世界卫生组织）建议非常年幼的孩子每天限制屏幕时间不超过一小时，而其他组织（如皇家儿科学会和儿童健康学院）则故意选择不就特定限制提出建议。这些准则可能会导致不同国家的父母对孩子使用数字媒体做出有意义的不同选择。我们使用了在英格兰剑桥郡和纽约市招募的 303 个家庭的样本，这些家庭在夫妇的第一个孩子出生前就参与了研究，我们探讨了儿童生命前两年数字媒体使用的预测因素。数据是在孩子 4 个月、14 个月和 24 个月大时收集的。潜在增长曲线分析的结果表明，一般来说，随着孩子年龄的增长，他们会花更多的时间使用数字媒体；然而，混合增长模型显示，大多数孩子属于两类中的一类：一类孩子（高媒体使用者；52.2%）会使用大量的数字媒体，而另一类（低媒体使用者；48.8%）则相对较少使用。美国的孩子成为低媒体使用者群体的可能性大约高出 30%，而父母的社会心理幸福感并没有影响群体归属。虽然这些差异可能是由于多种因素造成的，但这些发现可能反映了儿科建议的影响力。
