Poster #10 - The Longitudinal Indirect Relations from Screen Time to School Adjustment via Executive Function Difficulties

• In Event: Poster Session 07

Abstract

Screen time (ST) is an integral part of the daily lives of children today. The inevitability of ST in children’s life has raised concerns about the amount of ST and its importance in children’s learning and adjustment. In South Korea, the number of children at high risk of over-dependence on ST has increased, especially, among school-age children (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, 2021). A clear understanding of children’s ST, its effects, and the mechanism explaining the link is necessary to better guide ST use in children. Literature has yielded consistent results that an excessive amount of ST is harmful to school outcomes such as academic performance, school engagement, peer relationships, behavioral difficulties, etc. (e.g., McNeil et al., 2019; Pagani et al., 2010; Shiue, 2015). Executive function (EF) may serve as an important mediator of this relation because a robust body of empirical studies has demonstrated significant associations between ST and EF (e.g., Li et al., 2021; Lillard et al., 2015) and between EF and school outcomes (e.g., Holmes et al., 2016; Masten et al., 2012). Excessive or improper consumption of ST may disrupt the development of EF as it limits the extent to which children practice complex information processing (Nathanson et al., 2014). EF is also closely related to essential skills for successful school life such as focusing on a given task, using various strategies to achieve a goal, following rules, and controlling behaviors and emotions (Zelazo et al., 2016). Although general interest in children’s ST has grown, most ST research has focused on activities such as TV viewing (Zahedi et al. 2021), and little research has examined the long-term consequences of ST. Thus, the current study included various types of ST (i.e., TV, game, computers, and mobile devices) to examine the effects of ST on school adjustment (i.e., adjustment to overall school life, academic performance, peer relationships, and relationships with teachers) and explored how EF difficulties mediate this relation using a half-longitudinal mediation design.
Data from the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) collected by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education was used. A total of 1,612 South Korean children participated in the study when they were 3rd graders and 4th graders (3rd graders M = 8.27, SD = .17, 50.7% boys). Children’s ST was measured by the average daily consumption of TV, gaming, computers, and phones reported by parents. EF was assessed using the Child-Adolescent Executive Function Difficulty Screening Questionnaire (Song, 2014). School adjustment was measured by teacher reports (School Adjustment Inventory; Chi & Jung, 2006). A half-longitudinal mediation model with two time points was created. The results demonstrated that difficulties in EF mediated the relation between ST and school adjustment. In other words, children who spent more time engaged with ST had more problems in EF, which led to more difficulties adjusting to school. This finding has broad implications for intervention and prevention efforts to provide researchers, educators, and parents with foundational information to develop more specific, practical, and informative ST guidelines and practices.

Authors

• Juyoung Kim, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Monica M. Tsethlikai, Arizona State University