CORRELATIONS BETWEEN PRESCHOOLERS’ SCREEN TIME WITH GENDER, AGE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND OF THE FAMILIES

Abstract

The goal of this research was to study the relationship between screen time of preschool children and their gender, age and socio-economic family features. The additional focus was on studying the differences in preschoolers’ screen times between TV and digital devices. In order to reach the research goal, we have conducted a study involving 1,029 mothers of 4.5–7.5-year-olds. We have used a questionnaire with the three blocks of questions: demographics (age of the mother, age and gender of the child); use of digital devices (screen time per week); family socio-economics (socio-economic background of the family, extra activities of the child, mother’s education). The study showed that that a higher level of socio-economic well-being of the family and the opportunity to provide children with additional activities are associated with shorter screen time. Moreover, parents’ role models, their attitude towards digital device use and their perception of screen time norms significantly influence the time their children spend with devices. Another result is that preschool children spend more time watching TV (13 hours per week) than using digital devices (7 hours per week), regardless of the day of the week; and screen time on weekends is higher than on weekdays for both watching TV and using gadgets. Screen time has also been shown to increase between 4.5 and 7.5 years old, with the increase being related to longer time spent with gadgets rather than watching TV.