Joint Media Engagement Research Articles

Media Use in Daily Routines and Young Children’s Social Skills

ABSTRACT Research Findings: The current study examined (1) whether children’s media use during afterschool or bedtime routines, beyond their total media use, contributes uniquely to their peer social skills, and (2) whether joint media engagement serves as a protective factor for any negative associations between media use in daily routines and peer social skills. The study followed 459 children in a Midwestern U.S. state from kindergarten to Grade 1. Teachers reported on children’s peer social skills at both time points. Parents reported frequency of media use in afterschool and bedtime routines, daily media use duration, and joint media engagement. Hierarchical linear modeling was utilized to account for class-level clustering effects. Frequency of media use in afterschool routines negatively predicted children’s peer social skills in first grade, controlling for total media use, peer social skills in kindergarten, and demographics. However, media use in bedtime routines did not significantly predict social skills. Neither of these associations was significantly moderated by parental joint media engagement. Practice or Policy: The current results call for future research focused on effective means to regulate children’s media use in their daily routines to foster positive social development.

The Joint Media Engagement Scale (JMES): An instrument for measuring shared media use with children aged 1 to 5 years old.

The digital media landscape is rapidly shifting, and some children begin using digital media in infancy. As with book reading, young children need adult guidance to learn from digital media. Joint media engagement (JME) occurs when preschool children and their parents actively use digital media together. JME during early childhood is associated with increased learning from media. However, there are no validated scales of JME. In the present study, parents of 353 1-to-5-year olds answered a series of questions about their media use and behaviours. Exploratory factor analysis yielded two scales, one for viewing video content together and one for playing digital games together. Convergent validity was established by comparison to the widely used Television Mediation Scale. Together, these findings establish the JME instrument as a valid and reliable tool for measuring joint media engagement during early childhood.

Incloodle-Classroom: Technology for Inclusive Joint Media Engagement in a Neurodiverse Kindergarten Classroom

Incloodle-Classroom: Technology for Inclusive Joint Media Engagement in a Neurodiverse Kindergarten Classroom

Home literacy environment, digital media and vocabulary development in preschool children

A child’s vocabulary ability may be influenced by many different factors in their home environment. The present study focused on supportive aspects in home environments and the relation to children’s vocabulary size through an online study where 166 parents of children aged 47.63 months (range 33.7–59.9 months) responded. Children’s home literacy environments were positively associated with children’s vocabulary size. Aspects of the home environment such as the parents engaging in teaching colors, and letters and talking about daily activities showed a positive association with vocabulary size. Print book reading was important, but the number of books the parents read did not seem to be associated with vocabulary size, rather whether the parent was engaging in dialogical reading and discussing the books, explaining the content, and relating the content to the life of the child mattered. Digital media (screen media and digital games) did not show a positive association with vocabulary, regardless of content or parents’ joint media engagement. Watching screen media showed a negative association with developing vocabulary. This association was, however, ameliorated when positive influences and activities in the home literacy environment were present.

Opportunities and Challenges in Using Tangible, Teleoperated Voice Agents in Kid-Driven Moments in Play Among Families with Neurodivergent Children

Child-agent interaction research has largely focused on automated voice agents, although privacy concerns and quality of interactions serve as a rationale for using teleoperated agents in some settings. Research on neurodivergent children's interactions with voice agents has largely focused on therapy and classroom contexts as opposed to home contexts. We conducted a remote case study via Zoom observing six families with neurodivergent children playing with a tangible, parent-operated voice agent at home for up to eight weeks. We used quantitative measures of agent utilization, qualitative analysis of video recordings, and parent survey responses to identify implications for teleoperation interface design for playful voice agents. Based on our analysis, we argue joint media engagement principles are applicable to a broader set of play activities, and teleoperated agents present affordances and challenges distinct from those of automated agents.

Consulting the CDC and TikTok: asynchronous modes of joint media engagement for COVID-19 learning in families

ABSTRACT Media resources are a central component of families’ learning ecologies in the U.S. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the information ecosystem was flooded with content about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and personal protection measures. However, much of the coverage came through channels for adult audiences, and the ‘infodemic’ added to the difficulty of interpreting information from media sources. This article presents an analysis of the media learning ecologies of 109 families of 5–11-year-old children in the United States and describes how asynchronous modes of joint media engagement facilitated learning about Covid-19 during the early months of the pandemic. Findings call for a broader conceptualization of joint media engagement for learning in technologically saturated families.

“Back to the living room era”: Smart speaker usage and family democracy from the family dynamic perspective

Based on joint media engagement (JME) and parental mediation theory (PMT), this study conducted a textual and thematic analysis of 360 user-generated content videos to explore, in the family scenario, smart speaker use behavior between Chinese children and parents. The findings reveal the following: (a) smart speakers create a new JME model and new co-use scenarios; (b) the mediation strategy used by parents differs from the mediation strategies in traditional PMT; (c) smart speakers are social actors and play a mediating role in the construction of family relationships; and (d) smart speaker use behavior between parents and children is characterized by a return to the living room era, which creates a new family dynamic and a reshaping of family politics.

How Does Joint Media Engagement Affect the Development of Executive Functions in 5- to-7 year-old Children?

Executive functions are actively developing in children of preschool age. Executive functions' development is also influenced by the way children are using digital devices. Joint media engagement is one of the parameters of digital device usage that has been poorly studied so far, although this is of great importance from the point of view of cultural-historical psychology. Our research aimed to explore the association between young children's development of executive functions over a year, and their joint media engagement with parents and siblings in preschool children. Four hundred ninety (490) typically developing children (52% of them were boys) participated in the study. It was a longitudinal study: during the first stage, the children were 5-6 years old; the second stage followed one year later. The NEPSY-II subtests (Inhibition, Statue, Memory for Designs, Sentences Repetition) and the Dimensional Change Card Sort were used to assess executive functions. A questionnaire for mothers was used to get information about the children's joint media engagement and screen time. Children who watched video content and played video games together with their siblings developed more inhibitory control over the year than those children who did it alone. Co-viewing of video content with parents was associated with a decrease in cognitive flexibility over the year, as opposed to watching it alone. The obtained data allows us to conclude that joint media engagement is important for executive functions development, and that there are optimal formats of joint media engagement. Based on the limitations of this study, recommendations for future research were suggested.

Computational thinking with families: Studying an at-home media intervention to promote joint media engagement between preschoolers and their parents

This paper describes a study designed to investigate the promise of resources that support the development of computational thinking (CT) in preschool children. This study was the culmination of a collaborative research process between researchers and media developers of a home-based intervention that included media and hands-on activities created to support the development of young children's CT. The mixed-methods study included 108 families, each with a 4- or 5-year-old child. Families, who participated in the study at home for six weeks, were randomly assigned to an intervention group that viewed media and engaged with hands-on activities with a CT focus or a control group that viewed and engaged with non-STEM literacy content. Data collection consisted of parent surveys, parent interviews, and CT learning and pre-coding tasks to assess children's CT abilities. Results indicate that the learning intervention demonstrates promise in supporting parental understanding of CT. Experience with the intervention over the six weeks also appeared to cultivate some CT strategy use in children as evidenced by parental reports and performance on learning and pre-coding sequencing tasks.

Early language outcomes in Argentinean toddlers: Associations with home literacy, screen exposure and joint media engagement.

This study aimed to analyse the contribution of mothers' home literacy beliefs and practices and the quantity and quality of screen media exposure on Argentinean toddler's language. In addition, we considered parent-child joint engagement, as well as adult scaffolding behaviours during the use of electronic devices. A total of 465 mothers of 18-36 months old children completed an online survey including: the MacArthur Bates CDI, home literacy, screen exposure, joint engagement and scaffolding questionnaires. We observed positive effects of literacy beliefs, PC times and verbal scaffolding on language outcomes. TV exposure contributed negatively to vocabulary and, along with educational content, to sentence use. Shared reading and screen media experiences can be an opportunity for language stimulation, provided there is dialogue and joint engagement. Passive screen exposure and inadequate content may be detrimental for toddlers' language outcomes, probably by displacement of socially significant interactions.

Youth invisible work: the sociocultural and collaborative processes of online search and brokering between adolescents and English-language learning families

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the collaboration processes of immigrant families as they search for online information together. Immigrant English-language learning adults of lower socioeconomic status often work collaboratively with their children to search the internet. Family members rely on each other’s language and digital literacy skills in this collaborative process known as online search and brokering (OSB). While previous work has identified ecological factors that impact OSB, research has not yet distilled the specific learning processes behind such collaborations.Design/methodology/approachFor this study, the authors adhere to practices of a case study examination. This study’s participants included parents, grandparents and children aged 10–17 years. Most adults were born in Mexico, did not have a college-degree, worked in service industries and represented a lower-SES population. This study conducted two to three separate in-home family visits per family with interviews and online search tasks.FindingsFrom a case study analysis of three families, this paper explores the funds of knowledge, resilience, ecological support and challenges that children and parents face, as they engage in collaborative OSB experiences. This study demonstrates how in-home computer-supported collaborative processes are often informal, social, emotional and highly relevant to solving information challenges.Research limitations/implicationsAn intergenerational OSB process is different from collaborative online information problem-solving that happens between classroom peers or coworkers. This study’s research shows how both parents and children draw on their funds of knowledge, resilience and ecological support systems when they search collaboratively, with and for their family members, to problem solve. This is a case study of three families working in collaboration with each other. This case study informs analytical generalizations and theory-building rather than statistical generalizations about families.Practical implicationsDesigners need to recognize that children and youth are using the same tools as adults to seek high-level critical information. This study’s model suggests that if parents and children are negotiating information seeking with the same technology tools but different funds of knowledge, experience levels and skills, the presentation of information (e.g. online search results, information visualizations) needs to accommodate different levels of understanding. This study recommends designers work closely with marginalized communities through participatory design methods to better understand how interfaces and visuals can help accommodate youth invisible work.Social implicationsThe authors have demonstrated in this study that learning and engaging in family online searching is not only vital to the development of individual and digital literacy skills, it is a part of family learning. While community services, libraries and schools have a responsibility to support individual digital and information literacy development, this study’s model highlights the need to recognize funds of knowledge, family resiliency and asset-based learning. Schools and teachers should identify and harness youth invisible work as a form of learning at home. The authors believe educators can do this by highlighting the importance of information problem solving in homes and youth in their families. Libraries and community centers also play a critical role in supporting parents and adults for technical assistance (e.g. WiFi access) and information resources.Originality/valueThis study’s work indicates new conditions fostering productive joint media engagement (JME) around OSB. This study contributes a generative understanding that promotes studying and designing for JME, where family responsibility is the focus.

Joint Media Engagement in Families Playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (AC:NH) launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and families turned to it as a game to play together during isolation. This interview study of 27 families considered how families used AC:NH for Joint Media Engagement (JME), where family members engage with media content together, interacting with each other and bringing additional meaning to the experience. We find that the design of AC:NH well facilitates Takeuchi and Stevens's six conditions for productive JME. Furthermore, we identify and discuss additional conditions that contribute to productive JME: variety and flexibility in play styles that amplify mutual engagement, support for disentrained play that enables new forms of "joint" engagement, and scaffolding for affective interactions. This is followed by an exploration of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected JME. We conclude with design implications for building games to support productive JME for families through design for persistent shared spaces, flexible in-game progress, and social life simulation.

Understanding familial locative play: Exploring parent online social learning to play Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is a hybrid reality game (HRG) that research suggests is played by families in the context of joint-media engagement. Yet, the game interface itself provides little information about how to approach the game. Given this and the fact that many parents play this HRG with their young children, we examine the process of parent online social learning to play Pokémon Go. Drawing on an original study of Pokémon Go conducted between August and November 2019, including a Facebook survey on a non-probabilistic purposive sample, and semi-structured interviews with a range of parents who play this HRG with their children, the aim of this article is to explore parent online social learning as a path to optimising in-game performance. In the main, we found that the frequency with which parents followed tips provided by individuals online related inversely to how well they knew them and was differentially linked to the sources of information parents used. We nuance these findings with insights from the interviews.

Malaysian Parents’ Perception of How Screen Time Affects their Children’s Language

ABSTRACT Screen time has been documented to have effects on many areas of child development, including language development. The aim of this study was to obtain information about Malaysian children’s reported screen time and their parents’ perception on how screen time affects their language skills. An online survey was completed by 340 Malaysian parents of children aged 3- to 5-years. A majority of parents (60%) started giving their children screen time before the age of 18 months. On average, 3- to 5-year-olds were reported to spend 2.64 hours of screen time a day. Most parents believed that screen time improved their children’s language skills but this did not affect the amount of screen time they provided their children as there was no significant relationship between children’s reported screen time and parent’s perception on how it affects language. Malaysian children were exposed to screens at an early age and their screen time exceeded the amount recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Findings from this study suggest the need to increase Malaysian parents’ awareness about screen time limits for their children and also about positive screen viewing practices. IMPACT SUMMARY a. Prior State of Knowledge Summarize what is known about the topic. To date, no research has been conducted in Malaysia exploring the screen time of children aged 3 to 5 and their parents’ perception about how screen time affects children’s language skills. b. Novel Contributions Summarize the primary contributions the findings make to the field. The findings contribute to knowledge about screen time patterns in Malaysia, a developing country, and how the findings are similar to that of most other countries. c. Practical Implications Authors should explicitly state what the practical implications of their findings are, and whether those implications are primarily for practitioners, policymakers, or parents. For policymakers & practioners (e.g., speech-language pathologist): Findings suggest the need to provide Malaysian parents with information about screen time limits, the importance of joint media engagement, and ensuring that their children are watching appropriate content.

Growing Up in a Digital World - Digital Media and the Association With the Child's Language Development at Two Years of Age.

Digital media (DM), such as cellphones and tablets, are a common part of our daily lives and their usage has changed the communication structure within families. Thus, there is a risk that the use of DM might result in fewer opportunities for interactions between children and their parents leading to fewer language learning moments for young children. The current study examined the associations between children’s language development and early DM exposure.Participants: Ninety-two parents of 25months olds (50 boys/42 girls) recorded their home sound environment during a typical day [Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA)] and participated in an online questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to daily DM use and media mediation strategies, as well as a Swedish online version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, which includes a vocabulary scale as well as a grammar and pragmatics scale.Results: Through correlations and stepwise regressions three aspects of language were analyzed. The child’s vocabulary was positively associated with interactional turn-taking. The child’s vocabulary and grammar were negatively associated with the likelihood of parent’s device use during everyday child routines and the amount of TV watched by the child. The child’s pragmatic development was also positively associated with the parent’s device use in child routines but also with the parent’s joint media engagement (JME), as well as the child’s gender (where girls perform better).Conclusion: Our study confirms that specific aspects of the 2-year old’s DM environment are associated with the child’s language development. More TV content, whether it is viewed on a big screen or tablet, is negatively associated with language development. The likelihood of parents’ use of DM during everyday child routines is also negatively associated with the child’s language development. Positive linguistic parental strategies such as interactional turn-taking with the child, JME, and book reading, on the other hand, are positively associated with the child’s language development.

2-Year-Olds Learning From 2D Media With and Without Parental Support: Comparing Two Forms of Joint Media Engagement With Passive Viewing and Learning From 3D.

The study investigates to what degree two different joint media engagement (JME) strategies affect children’s learning from two-dimensional (2D)-media. More specifically, we expected an instructed JME strategy to be more effective than a spontaneous, non-instructed, JME strategy. Thirty-five 2-year old children saw a short video on a tablet demonstrating memory tasks together with a parent. The parents were randomized into two groups: One group (N = 17) was instructed to help their child by describing the actions they saw on the video while the other group (N = 18) received no specific instruction besides “do as you usually do.” The parents in the instructed group used significantly more words and verbs when supporting their child but both groups of children did equally well on the memory test. In a second step, we compared the performance of the two JME groups with an opportunistic comparison group (N = 95) tested with half of the memory tasks live and half of the tasks on 2D without any JME support. Results showed that the JME intervention groups received significantly higher recall scores than the no JME 2D comparison group. In contrast, the three-dimensional (3D) comparison group outperformed both JME groups. In sum, our findings suggest that JME as implemented here is more effective in promoting learning than a no JME 2D demonstration but less so than the standard 3D presentation of the tasks.

Characteristics of Children's Media Use and Gains in Language and Literacy Skills.

Media use could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other language-enhancing activities like shared reading and caregiver-child interactions. Furthermore, the extent to which children use media with adults (joint media engagement), the extent to which they use interactive media (apps/games), and the time of the day and week during which media use occurs may attenuate any negative effects. The current study examines the relation between characteristics of children’s media use and gains in first graders’ language and literacy skills. Children (N = 488) completed direct assessments of language and literacy skills in the spring of kindergarten and the spring of first grade. Parents reported how many hours children used both interactive and non-interactive media during different times of the day on the most recent weekday and weekend day and responded to items about the extent to which they engage with their children during media use. A quadratic relationship between media use and language gains showed that a moderate amount of media use was related to larger language gains, whereas high use was related to smaller gains. For literacy, an interaction between media use and joint media engagement showed a small negative effect of media use at low levels of joint media engagement and little to no relation between media use and literacy gains at higher levels of joint media engagement. Children’s language and literacy skills were not predicted by either the proportion of media time that was spent with apps/games or morning and weekday media use. These results show that moderate amounts of media use may not be a negative influence on children’s developing language skills, whereas high levels may displace other language-enhancing activities. Additionally, joint media engagement may play an important buffering role in the relation between media use and early literacy skills, aligned with current recommendations encouraging co-viewing.

Parent-child joint media engagement in infancy.

Early conversations are an important source in shaping children's cognitive and emotional development, and it is vital to understand how parents use media as a platform to engage in conversations with their young children and what might predict the quality of these interactions. Thus, in the current study we explored the nature of parent-child discourse while engaging in media (i.e., joint media engagement) with infants, and how parent (empathic concern and responsiveness) and child (negative emotionality and regulatory capacity) variables might be associated with the quality of engagement. The current study consisted of 269 infants (50% female, Mage =17.09months, SD=3.93; 59% White) and their primary caregiver (98% mothers) who engaged in a variety of in-home tasks and parental questionnaires. Results established three meaningful codes for both parent and child that assessed positive and negative joint media engagement. Further, results suggested that parental empathic concern was associated with positive parent and child media engagement, while child negative emotionality was associated with lower levels of distraction. Discussion focuses on the importance of studying parent-child discourse in the context of joint media engagement and recommends limiting media exposure before 18months of age.

The impact of joint media engagement on parent–child interactions: A systematic review

The American Academy of Paediatrics recommend that parent and children (aged 2–18 years) jointly engage in media yet the impact on interactions is unknown. This systematic review identified joint media engagement (JME) rates, the supports offered by parents and children to each other and the impact of JME on parent–child interactions. A search within six article databases (ProQuest, PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, Pub Med, and CINAHL) from January 2007 to June 2019 found 7,130 results. Included papers involved parent–child dyads engaging in JME with a smartphone or tablet. In the 27 identified papers, most parents engaged in JME sometimes (41–72%) compared to JME use that was frequent (13–38%) and JME refusal (4–8%). Parents and children supported each other with cognitive, physical, technical, and affective techniques. Children were more engaged during JME activities and key elements of language quality was reduced compared to nonmobile device activities (such as toy play). The impact of JME on language quantity, warmth, scaffolding and the overall parent–child relationship was inconsistent, however, several factors that potentially influenced this impact were identified. Research investigating these factors and how apps may foster interactions is needed.

Joint Media Engagement between Parents and Preschoolers in the U.S., China, and Taiwan

Global app marketplaces make families in foreign countries easily accessible to developers, but most scholarship on joint media engagement (JME) between parents and children reports on data from participants in Western contexts. We conducted an observational lab study to examine how preschoolers (age 3-5) and parents (N=74) from three different regions of the world (communities in China, Taiwan, and the United States) engage with two types of tablet games: an instructional game with goals and an exploratory, open-ended game. We found systematic differences among groups and between games. For example, parents from China and Taiwan frequently picked up their child's hand and used it as a tool to engage with the screen, a practice parents in our U.S. sample did not employ. Dyads from all three samples exhibited more warmth when playing an instructional game than an exploratory one. Our results suggest that characteristics of the populations we sampled interact with design features, that is, the same design prompted opposing behaviors in different groups. We conclude that it may be useful to examine goal-free and goal-oriented JME as separate constructs, that design choices influence the roles parents adopt during JME, and that the range of behaviors we observed complicate the prevailing research narrative of what positive and productive JME looks like.