Going to school in a digital world – what is the impact of digital media on the child’s development of language, pre-literacy, communication and social understanding skills

Digital media (DM), such as cell phones, tablets, and tv, is integrated into every aspect of life, yet we know very little of how it affects young children’s development.

At five years of age, most children in Sweden use DM daily as do the majority of these children´s parents (Swedish Media Council (SMC), 2019). According to the new school curriculum from 2019, all preschools must teach digital skills for ages 1-5.

These new requirements have led to many new questions concerning the use of DM by parents, preschool teachers, and other stakeholders.

Questions that are often unanswerable, as research is largely lacking.Strong language (including emergent literacy skills), communication, and social skills are of utmost importance for school readiness (Williams & Lerner, 2019).

Children’s DM use may delay school readiness as indicated by our previous studies documenting adverse associations between DM and language development (Sundqvist, Koch, Birberg-Thornberg, Barr, & Heimann, 2020) and children´s behaviors (Sundqvist, Koch, & Heimann, 2020).The proposed study investigates if, and how, 5-year-old children (N=80) are influenced by their own, as well as, by their parents’ DM use.

We will take a unique opportunity to recruit children from a prior longitudinal study of language, socio-cognitive development, and media exposure at 9 to 24-month-olds and test these children at the transition to schooling.

The study will provide new insights about both risks and benefits associated with early and concurrent DM in connection with transition to schooling; a transition that engenders considerable new socio-cognitive demands.

We will integrate data from the family and preschool using questionnaires, diaries, and interviews with structured observations and experiments focusing on the child’s socio-cognitive development covering language, pre-literacy, and communication skills, as well as, children’s understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others.