Young children’s screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 12 countries

Abstract

Older children with online schooling requirements, unsurprisingly, were reported to have increased screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in many countries. Here, we ask whether younger children with no similar online schooling requirements also had increased screen time during lockdown. We examined children’s screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in a large cohort (n = 2209) of 8-to-36-month-olds sampled from 15 labs across 12 countries. Caregivers reported that toddlers with no online schooling requirements were exposed to more screen time during lockdown than before lockdown. While this was exacerbated for countries with longer lockdowns, there was no evidence that the increase in screen time during lockdown was associated with socio-demographic variables, such as child age and socio-economic status (SES). However, screen time during lockdown was negatively associated with SES and positively associated with child age, caregiver screen time, and attitudes towards children’s screen time. The results highlight the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on young children’s screen time.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Bergmann, C Dimitrova, N Alaslani, K Almohammadi, A Alroqi, H Aussems, S Barokova, M Davies, C https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9347-7905 Gonzalez-Gomez, N Gibson, SP Havron, N Horowitz-Kraus, T Kanero, J Kartushina, N Keller, C Mayor, J Mundry, R Shinskey, J Mani, N
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: 7 February 2022 Published (online): 7 February 2022 Accepted: 14 January 2022
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > Linguistics & Phonetics (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	07 Feb 2022 12:48
Last Modified:	25 Apr 2022 14:35
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41598-022-05840-5
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:183273

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Young children’s screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 12 countries

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