The role of socioeconomic status in U.S. children’s co-viewing television and family member relationship quality over time

Abstract

ABSTRACT Previous research on family television co-viewing has tended not to examine variation by socioeconomic status (SES). This research uses time diaries from socioeconomically and racially diverse child and adolescent respondents (ages 8–17) from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) in 2002 (N = 1918), 2007 (N = 1288), 2014 (N = 743), and 2019 (N = 622). I investigate socioeconomic differences in children’s total shared TV time and how SES interacts with children’s TV co-viewing to shape child-reported relationship quality with their most co-viewing family members. I find that parental educational attainment is significantly associated with total shared television time, but not consistently with child-reported closeness to family members. I find that co-viewed television time is only significantly associated with closeness to their most co-viewing family member in some waves for those whose head of household education is less than high school. Mothers being the most co-viewing family member, however, emerged as significantly associated with child-reported closeness at all waves, emphasizing the importance of co-viewing television specifically for the mother-child relationship.