Television and Families: What Do Young Children Watch with Their Parents?

Abstract

A sample of 271 3- and 5-year-olds and their families participated in a 2-year longitudinal study of television viewing patterns. 5 1-week diaries for all family members were collected at 6-month intervals. Programs were categorized as: (1) child informative, (2) child entertainment, (3) news and informative, (4) sports, (5) comedy, (6) drama, (7) action-adventure, and (8) variety-game. The majority of child programs were viewed without parents, while the majority of adult programs were watched with parents. Coviewing patterns of adult programs were predicted from parents' individual viewing habits, but not from the child's. Coviewing declined with age. Parental encouragement and regulation of viewing were orthogonal. Children whose parents encouraged viewing watched more child informative programming; children of restrictive parents watched less entertainment programming. Encouraging parents coviewed more than nonencouraging parents. Results support the assertion that parental viewing preferences, habits, and orientations toward television influence children's viewing, both with and without parents.

Evidence for the effects of parental mediation and childhood media use on US college students' social media use

“…Studies of the effect of restrictive mediation on children's media consumption, the effect with which the present study is concerned, have yielded divergent results as well. In some studies, restrictive mediation was found to be negatively associated with the amount of children's television viewing (e.g., Schooler et al, 2006;St. Peters, Fitch, Huston, Wright, & Eakins, 1991).…”

Attachment, Working Models of Parenting, and Expectations for Using Television in Childrearing

“…The literatures on attachment and working models of parenting have led us to suspect that parents' reliance on television may stem from more fundamental views about parenting, children, and parent‐child relationships. When children view television, they are typically alone or with siblings (Lawrence & Wozniak, 1989; Mendelsohn et al, 2008; St. Peters, Fitch, Huston, Wright, & Eakins, 1991; Warren, 2003), meaning that parent‐child coviewing is relatively rare.…”

“…Peters, Fitch, Huston, Wright, & Eakins, 1991; Warren, 2003), meaning that parent‐child coviewing is relatively rare. In fact, parents tend to be fairly uninvolved in their children's television viewing more generally, setting few rules for viewing and seldom discussing programs with their youngsters (Barkin et al, 2006; St. Peters et al, 1991).…”

Do You See What I See? Parent and Child Reports of Parental Monitoring of Media

“…More specifically, younger children are more likely to receive both active mediation (Barkin et al, 2006; Mohr, 1979) and restrictive mediation (Atkin et al, 1991; Austin, Bolls, Fujioka, & Engelbertson, 1999; Brown, Childer, Bauman, & Koch, 1990; Desmond, Hirsch, Singer, & Singer, 1987; Fry & McCain, 1980; Mohr, 1979; Valkenburg, Krcmar, Peeters, & Marseille, 1999; Warren, 2001). Some work shows that coviewing is negatively correlated with child age (Austin et al, 1999; St. Peters, Fitch, Huston, Wright, & Eakins, 1991), but Dorr, Kovaric, and Doubleday (1989) found that it was positively correlated with age, perhaps because of increasing similarity between parent and child program preferences.…”