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.

Figure 1

Positive association between children’s screen time and age (in days; panel a) and negative association between children’s screen time and SES (indexed by maternal education; see text for scale; panel b) in the COVID-language dataset (n = 1292). The dashed lines and the shaded area indicate the fitted model and its 95% confidence intervals (with all other terms in the model centered to a mean of zero). The area of the dots is proportionate to the number of the respective observations (range 1–332).

Figure 2

Positive association between children’s screen time and caregiver screen time and between children’s screen time (n= 951; panel a) and caregiver affective response to children’s screen time in the COVID-screen dataset (n = 951; panel b). The dashed lines and the shaded area indicate the fitted model and its 95% confidence intervals (with all other terms in the model centered to a mean of zero). The area of the dots is proportionate to the number of the respective observations (range 1–197).

Figure 3

Children's screen time at T1 and T2 of data collection, separated by country, sample size indicated below the x-axis. The area of the dots indicates proportion within a sample, lines connect paired data and line thickness signals proportion such that thicker lines reference more common patterns. The blue overlay line indicates mean change to highlight overall trends in the data.

Figure 4

Children's screen time at T1 (panel a) and T2 (panel b) by lockdown duration (in days), the dashed line indicates the model estimates and the shaded area its 95% confidence intervals. The area of the dots is proportionate to the number of the respective observations (range 1–51).

Figure 5

Expressive vocabulary size and children’s screen time before lockdown (T1, top) and during lockdown (T2, bottom). The dashed lines and the shaded area indicate the model estimates and its 95% confidence intervals (with all other terms in the model centered to a mean of zero). The area of the dots is proportionate to the number of the respective observations (range 1–4).

Figure 6

Caregiver reports of children’s screen time (at T2) from the COVID-language dataset (n = 1292, panel a) and the COVID-screen dataset (n = 992; before exclusion for different models, panel b). Overlay lines indicate country-level mean scores.