EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Curriculum and Instruction

Child media use with young children has become a more common occurrence in daily life, with parents overseeing the child's media use. During the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic, as parents experienced higher levels of stress, child media use increased (Hartshorne et al., 2021). To frame parents' experience of managing children's media use during the pandemic, this study interviewed eight parents of children, ages 2-5 years, during the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic. Data was collected using semi-structured questions, and photo submissions from participants as prompts for in-depth exploration of the topic. Findings revealed parents engaged in three major parenting practices of evaluation, management, and observation in an iterative cycle to encourage healthy media habits. Within the practice of evaluation, they decided what media to encourage, restrict, and tolerate. To manage the media use, they set expectations, controlled content, and modeled media behaviors. Parents made changes to improve their child's media experiences by observing the child's reactions to the content, amounts of media, and devices used. Through the lens of Parent Development Theory (Mowder, 2005), it was noted that child media use supported the parent role of providing child safety, behavioral regulation, bonding experiences, and educational experiences. During the pandemic, child media use increased in part as a response to the reduction in resources such as childcare, playdates, and child-centered activities outside the home. In addition, parents found creative ways to adapt child media use to support their own needs for self-care and social support during the pandemic to avoid burnout and be resilient parents to their young children.

Committee: Nancy Jennings Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Constance Kendall Theado Ph.D. (Committee Member); Allison Breit Smith Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Software