Bangladeshi Parents’ Awareness of Young Children’s Smartphone Use

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Nowadays the tendency for smartphone use among children is noticeable and day by day this tendency is increasing at an alarming rate. The aim of this study was to explore the status of Bangladeshi children’s smartphone use and Bangladeshi parents' awareness of young children’s smartphone use in terms of AAP guidelines. The study employed a mixed-methods research approach and adopted purposive sampling. The data were collected through an online questionnaire from 83 parents who owned smartphones and whose children were between 0 and 5 years old. The findings show that 75.6% of parents did not know about the guidelines for children’s screen use recommended by the American Academy of Paediatrics. Although they did not know the recommended guidelines, 81.1% of the parents had taken various steps to control their children's excessive smartphone usage and the steps were effective in reducing children's excessive smartphone use. It is noteworthy that 98% of children use smartphones and the excessive use of smartphones is negatively associated with the development of children. Moreover, educational contents on smartphones that maintain the guidelines are positively associated with children’s development. However, it is clear that smartphones had both positive and negative effects on children’s development and most of the parents were unaware of the AAP guidelines for screen use. Therefore, there is a need for increasing proper awareness among parents to mitigate the negative effects before the problems arise.