Meeting preschool screen time recommendations: which parental strategies matter?

Caroline Fitzpatrick; Emma Cristini; Jonathan Y Bernard; Gabrielle Garon-Carrier

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1287396

Meeting preschool screen time recommendations: which parental strategies matter?

Front Psychol. 2023 Nov 6:14:1287396. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1287396. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Caroline Fitzpatrick^{1

2}, Emma Cristini¹, Jonathan Y Bernard³, Gabrielle Garon-Carrier⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Preschool and Elementary School Education, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.
² Department of Childhood Education, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa.
³ Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Statistics (CRESS), Université Paris Cité and Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Inserm, INRAE, Paris, France.
⁴ Department of Psychoeducation, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.

Abstract

Background: High levels of screen use by preschoolers may contribute to adverse health and developmental outcomes. Little is known about which parental strategies may be protective against intensive screen use by children. Our aim is to estimate whether parent strategies for mediating child screen time including restrictive and instructive mediation and social coviewing, predict preschooler adherence to the screen time recommendation of ≤1 h/day during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examine if parent restrictive mediation interacts with child temperament characteristics.

Methods: Our sample is composed of 315 Canadian parents of preschoolers surveyed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents provided measures of child adherence to screen time guidelines at ages 3.5 (baseline) and 4.5 years. Parents also reported how often they used restrictive and instructional mediation, and social coviewing to manage their child's screen use. Control variables include child sex and temperament (effortful control, negative affectivity, extraversion), educational attainment, and parenting stress at age 3.5.

Results: A logistic regression revealed that parental restrictiveness was associated with a 4 time increase in the odds of adherence to screen time guidelines, OR = 4.07 (95% CI [1.70-13.03]). Parental social coviewing decreased the chances of adherence by 80% (OR = 0.20, 95% CI [0.09-0.48]). Furthermore, children not meeting recommendation at 3.5 were 98% less likely to respect the recommendation 1 year later (OR = 0.02, 95% CI [0.01-0.07]). Results were adjusted for child sex, temperament, baseline screen time, and parent education and stress The interaction between the restriction mediation and child temperament on later screen time was not significant.

Conclusion: Our results indicate that some parental strategies may be more effective than others for managing preschooler screen time. Parent use of restrictive mediation was most likely to forecast child adherence to later screen time recommendations. The present results may contribute to the development of targeted family-based interventions designed to promote healthy development from a young age.

Keywords: early childhood; guidelines; parent mediation; parental monitoring; preschooler; screen time, screen use.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. All phases of this study were supported by an establishment grant from Research Nova Scotia, and insight development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, an operating grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Canada Research Chairs program. JB was further supported by a grant from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) (iSCAN project, ANR-20-CE36-0001).