Meaningful digital connectivity during distance learning: Equity, parental experiences, and Common Sense's texting-based intervention

• In Event: Remote Research Methods to Understand How Families and Educators Are Navigating Youth Learning During the Pandemic

Abstract

Objectives and theoretical framework
This project examines the experiences of lower-income families and families of color with remote learning: the challenges, the bright spots, and their hopes and fears going into the new 2021-2022 school year. Additionally, it examines how a simple texting-based intervention—Common Sense’s Tech Balance program—may help parents navigate these experiences. This work draws upon the frameworks of meaningful digital connectivity (Katz, 2017) and ecological digital equity (Katz & Gonzalez, 2016). Equity involves both the quantity and quality of technological access that families can use to reach their everyday goals; children’s digital connectivity contributes and is affected by the family and community context.

Methods and data
This is a mixed-methods project. The ongoing quantitative component is a user survey of Common Sense’s Tech Balance program. This free texting-based program sends weekly English and Spanish messages with tips to parents about children’s media use. Data collection is ongoing, with 266 completed surveys. The qualitative component included a focus group with 8 parents in Nebraska in May 2020 and 15 individual interviews with parents in California, Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington. These individual interviews were conducted in English (7 interviews) and Spanish (8 interviews) during June-August 2020, and specifically included parents of color and lower-income parents.

Preliminary results
Qualitative data suggest that families express how remote learning both influences and is influenced by parent-child relationships, the family, the school, and the community. Overall, this period has contributed to a considerable amount of parental guilt over children’s media use that intertwines with issues of equity to meaningful digital connectivity. In particular, parents reflect on how digital connectivity influences their children’s mental health, socialization, and quality of education. While some children have had a highly digital remote learning experience, the quality of this experience was influenced by family technological and home resources (including access and knowledge). Others reported a less digital experience, relying on printed packets; this was particularly limiting for essential workers who needed to negotiate time off work to pick up/drop off packets, and for low-income families who needed to weigh paying for expensive technology while balancing other family needs. In the midst of this, parents note the importance of their community networks for advice, emotional support, and instrumental help. The quantitative component will supplement these findings, illuminating parents’ biggest summer concern and how the Common Sense Tech Balance Program might be a useful intervention in alleviating pain points mentioned by parents in the qualitative research.

Significance
With many schools negotiating how to best move forward during the COVID-19 pandemic, this project provides insight into how families of color and lower-income families have negotiated meaningful digital connectivity with remote learning. These families have the least digital access (Chandra et al., 2020), have been hit the hardest by the virus (Artiga, Garfield, & Orgera, 2020), and will disproportionately feel the effects of the virus for decades to come (Dorn, Hancock, Sarakatsannis, & Viruleg, 2020). Methodologically, this research illustrates how remote interviews and text-based surveys have effectively reached these families during this time.

Authors

• Alanna Peebles, Common Sense

• LaToya Adams, Wonder Why Consulting

• Michael Robb, Common Sense Media

• Rocío López, Common Sense