Relation between Parent and Child Screentime and COVID-related Screentime is mediated by Executive Function

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Technology, Media & Child Development

Abstract

The ubiquity of digital tools for learning and leisure have changed the daily lives of families (Pew, 2017). Prior work has established that greater use of media technology is linked to lower self-regulation in adults (Wilmer, Sherman & Chein, 2017). Parental and child self-regulation skills are also known to mitigate adverse effects of family-level transitions, which are typically associated with heightened stress, externalizing behaviors, and lower academic achievement in children (Morrison, Pointz & McClelland, 2009). In prior work with this sample, we have linked individual differences in child executive function to neural responses evoked during selective attention, family socio-economic status, and parent-reported self-regulation (Weiss et al., 2018).
Here we investigated the relation of parental screentime with child screentime, in relation to executive function prior to COVID-19, and the relation of executive function with changes in child screentime during a two-month period (from June to August 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Self-regulation was indexed by executive function in a sample of 40 children, measured by age-adjusted scores on the flanker and dimensional card sort tasks from the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery. Prior to COVID-19, multiple regressions indicated that parent self-reported screen time was correlated with objectively indexed mobile-collected screentime (r = .71) and also predicted child self-reported screentime, β=0.455, SE=0.132, t=3.436, p=0.002, above and beyond demographic variables (gender, race, parental income, parental education and household SES index). However, this relation disappeared when controlling for child executive function, t=1.681, p=0.109, owing to the shared significance accounted by child self-regulation and parent self-reported screentime, β=0.435, SE=0.164, t=2.663, p=0.013. These results indicate that parent behavior may reflect a generalized impact on children’s self-regulatory control, especially in children low in self-regulation, rather than transmitting only screentime habits; alternatively, screentime could be an index for other home factors critical to child cognitive development (Brieant et al., 2017).
During COVID-19, children in our sample experienced a digital immersion, gaining new access to internet service (n=6), increased data plan (n=4) and school-issued computing devices (n=8). This likely facilitated the switch to online-based work for parents and children, resulting in greater overall screentime in our sample and others (Hartshorne et al., 2020). Controlling for demographics, regressions indicated that children’s existing executive function related with increased use of web browser activity, β=0.536, SE=0.145, t(9)=3.69, p=0.034 and marginally inversely related to increases in videochatting, but not overall screentime, social media or app-specific screentime. It is further hypothesized that children’s screentime will continue to increase relative to that of their parents, though this effect may be buffered in children with higher self-regulatory ability. During COVID-19, children’s existing executive function modified the direction, app-specific patterns and medium for increased transmission of digital screentime habits from parent to child. Parsing device-reported and self-reported screentime, as well as nuances of patterns across context is critical to assessing disparities in internet access and subsequent screentime behavior in families.

Authors

• Brydie Boyle, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Staci Weiss, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter J Marshall, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author