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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Development in Infancy
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1390276
This article is part of the Research Topic Early Media Exposure View all 12 articles

Digital Media in Early Childhood: Risk Factors for Online Harm and Psychosocial Correlates

Provisionally accepted
Megan Gath Megan Gath *Cara Swit Cara Swit
  • University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Early and middle childhood are times of rapid development, and critical periods for laying the foundations of life-long trajectories of socioemotional well-being. High levels of screen media use are of growing concern to parents, health professionals, and researchers, given the increasing body of research demonstrating detrimental impacts of excessive screen use in young children. One particular consequence is the risk that children encounter online content or experiences that are upsetting or distressing, including exposure to inappropriate or adult content, cyberbullying, and interactions with strangers that they don’t know. This research examined experiences of online harm reported in a sample of 8-year-old children, with a focus on identifying risk factors and psychosocial correlates of online harm. Data for this study were collected from children and their mothers as part of the prospective longitudinal Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) study (n=4,920 children with data at age 8). Children were assessed at 4.5-years-old and 8-years-old. The findings of this research indicate that approximately a quarter of New Zealand children have experienced online harm (that is, have encountered online content that worried, upset, or bothered them) by the age of 8. Our analysis indicates that children with behavioral difficulties are at greater risk of online harm, as are children with more personal devices. Experiences of online harm were found to be negatively associated with child self-worth and positively associated with depressive symptoms, highlighting the critical importance of considering online harm as a contributing factor to child and youth well-being and mental health in our media-saturated world. Our results also point to practical solutions for parents, such as limiting the number of personal media devices that children have in early and middle childhood.

    Keywords: online harm, Online risk, Growing Up in New Zealand, Mental Health, Self-worth, Digital Media

    Received: 23 Feb 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Gath and Swit. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Megan Gath, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.