Researchers at SMU and UCLA find high levels of exposure which may have concerning implications for language development
Digital media and the devices that deliver it are everywhere in family life today. For infants, it turns out, direct use isn’t the main concern. A new study published in the journal Infancy finds that infants as young as eight months old are exposed to significant levels of indirect media, such as background TV noise, and that this indirect exposure makes up a far larger share of their media environment than direct use does. Researchers say this exposure comes during a critical window for language development, raising new concerns about its effects on young children.
The study, “Screen Time Is More than Just the Screen: Indirect Media Exposure Dominates Infants’ Digital Environments,” by Sarah Kucker, associate professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University and director of the Kids in Development Lab at SMU, and Julie Schneider, a project scientist at UCLA with the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning, finds infants age 8-25 months were exposed on average to more than 4.6 hours each day of indirect digital media, including background TV and device use by others around them.
“I think the biggest takeaway was just seeing how much time very young kids are being exposed to media,” says Schneider. “Background TV specifically, but just background digital media in general dominates children’s early environments.”
“These rising rates of digital media exposure – both direct use and more passive exposure – is changing the landscape of learning in childhood. Instead of time spent playing with a caregiver or interacting with a peer, children and caregivers may become distracted by media such that it replaces opportunities for hands-on, rich interactions and learning that we know are critical in early childhood,” adds Kucker.
The study also found that children from lower income families had higher levels of indirect exposure to background media and caregiver cell phone use than their more affluent peers.
The researchers underscore however that they do not interpret these differences in findings by socio-economic status (SES) as suggesting that income directly causes differences in children’s media environments. Rather, income-to-needs is widely used as a proxy for a broader set of structural conditions that shape daily life, including access to material resources, time and bandwidth, housing density, childcare availability, and caregiver stress and wellbeing – all factors which may shape how, why and when children are exposed to digital media in their environments.
“The idea that because you’re from a lower socio-economic background that you’re going to have more media exposure, that is correlational, not causation. It could be for a number of reasons and it’s not true of all families. There’s a lot of variability there,” Schneider says.
While digital media is increasingly prevalent, little is known about how infants and toddlers are exposed to it across different contexts and demographics. The new study sought to address this gap by asking 252 socioeconomically diverse caregivers of children 8–25 months about their child’s media exposure, including how much, what kinds, when, by whom, and in what form digital media is used in the home. The study finds substantial variability in children’s media environments, with older infants being exposed to greater amounts and more diverse forms of media than younger infants.
The study highlights that the most prominent source of media exposure early in life is not through children’s personal use of devices, but rather indirect exposure through background media use (media use by others around the child), with background exposure representing about 70 percent of children’s total TV and handheld device exposure. There is variation across families and exposure to media is not uniformly distributed throughout the day and is significantly more common on weekends. Variation also can be seen across activities such as play or mealtimes.
The study details the complex ways in which digital media is present in children’s environments. For example, auditory distractions from digital media occur most often during meals, but visually during play, suggesting meaningful variation in how media may interfere with key learning moments and caregiver–child interactions.
“We saw that auditory distractions were the most prevalent during mealtimes, which means that again, the TV is on, the iPads on, the kid might not be looking at it, but it’s on, and they can hear it. That’s reducing opportunities to talk at dinner or during a meal, which research has shown is a valuable time for language development and learning,” says Schneider.
Another example can be seen in the growing use of cell phones. Caregivers responding to the survey universally reported having smartphones within reach during playtime, with many acknowledging that their device was a distraction even when not in active use.
Importantly, while developmental guidelines recommend minimizing screen exposure before age two, the study’s findings indicate that even within the narrow window of infancy and toddlerhood, digital media exposure increases with age. Direct media use rises as children get older, but rather than replacing background media, direct screen time appears to be layered on top of existing indirect exposure, resulting in higher overall media exposure across the first two years of life. This cumulative exposure occurs during a sensitive period for language, attention, and social development raising important concerns over early media exposure to delays in vocabulary growth and self-regulation.
“This study piggybacks on a different paper that we published previously that shows a direct link between digital media exposure and vocabulary, and other research shows similar findings. In general, the higher exposure you have to digital media, the lower your vocabulary knowledge,” says Schneider.
“This is, in part, because the content of most (but not all) media is lower quality and harder for children to learn from, and it takes away time from learning in high quality social interactions. This is a critical window for language development and time children do not get back later,” Kucker adds.
“Our growing concern is that higher levels of background media are having an impact on children’s developing vocabularies, especially during this critical period of vocabulary growth, and that children who come from lower SES household may be more impacted” says Schneider.
The researchers make clear that they’re not saying caregivers you should never watch TV or use digital devices. That’s not realistic to people’s lives.
But they do hope the study will help to bring greater awareness to caregivers, policymakers and society about the prevalence of indirect digital exposure and its impact on young children and offer guidance beyond a focus on limiting active screen time use.
“We should be putting recommendations in place around device use, really shifting it to be not just about direct digital media use, but be thoughtful and mindful about having the TV on or using your phone or other devices when you are with your children.”
“When you’re sitting and talking to your child, if they’re also hearing strains of speech from other devices, that’s going to be disruptive to them,” concludes Schneider.
The study, “Screen Time Is More than Just the Screen: Indirect Media Exposure Dominates Infants’ Digital Environments, is available online with open access in the journal “Infancy” at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/infa.70074