This study shows that preschool-aged children’s screen time on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, is more negatively related to their self-regulation than their TV use. Children’s earlier self-regulatory deficits and parental screen time were mostly unrelated to their media use, and their self-regulation was unrelated to parents’ screen time. As young children are increasingly exceeding screen time guidelines, these findings encourage parents and other caregivers to limit children’s screen media use in early childhood.
Amanda Lawrence, Ph.D., and Daniel Choe, Ph.D., found associations between young preschool-aged children's performance on behavioral measures of self-regulation and their parent-reported age at which they began using screen media devices and their current amount of screen media device use. Children who began using screen media devices at a young age and those who currently spent more hours per week specifically using mobile screen devices, such as smart phones and tablets, performed more poorly on self-regulation measures.
