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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Development in Infancy
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1404235
This article is part of the Research Topic Early Media Exposure View all 8 articles

Weekend screen use of parents and children associates with child language skills

Provisionally accepted
Tiia Tulviste Tiia Tulviste 1*Jaan Tulviste Jaan Tulviste 1,2
  • 1 University of Tartu, Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia
  • 2 National Institute for Health Development, Tallinn, Harju County, Estonia

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

    The study examined the relationship between screen time and types of screen activities engaged in by children, mothers, and fathers on weekends, and its association with mother-reported vocabulary and grammatical skills of children aged 2;5 to 4;0. Mothers reported the language skills of 421 children (M age = 38.18 months; SD = 5.73) by the Estonian CDI-III, and the screen use of children, mothers, and fathers by the Screen Time Inventory. The results showed that higher total screen time of children was linked to poorer vocabulary and grammatical skills. None of the screen-based activities that children, mothers, and fathers engaged in, including co-viewing of screens and socializing time, were found to positively relate to language skills. Playing video games was negatively associated with children's language skills, regardless of whether it was the child, mother, or father gaming. By applying Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to analyze the screen time of children, mothers, and fathers, we identified 3 distinct family screen use profiles (low, moderate, and high users), and these profiles differed by parental education, screen-based activities, and children's language skills. The findings underscore the significance of family-based interventions when addressing screen time within the context of child language development.

    Keywords: screen time, expressive vocabulary, grammatical skills, language development, CDI, Screen-based activities, preschoolers, latent class analysis

    Received: 20 Mar 2024; Accepted: 02 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tulviste and Tulviste. 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: Tiia Tulviste, University of Tartu, Tartu, 50090, Tartu County, Estonia

    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.