Digital Media Use in Early Childhood by Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Sonia Livingstone, Brian O’Neill, Kylie J. Stevenson and Donell Halloway examines how children under six interact with digital media, exploring both positive and adverse impacts at home, at school and elsewhere. This rich and nuanced ethnographic study is essential reading on a topic of increasing relevance for researchers in developmental psychology, media studies, sociology of education and digital anthropology, writes Rana Abhyendra Singh.

Digital Media Use in Early Childhood. Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Sonia Livingstone, Brian O’Neill, Kylie J. Stevenson and Donell Halloway. Bloomsbury. 2024.

Digital Media Use in Early Childhood by Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Sonia Livingstone, Brian O’Neil, Kylie J. Stevenson and Donell Halloway is a timely examination of how children interact with digital media in their early years. The book navigates the complex terrain between the fears around the negative impacts of screen time and the optimistic acceptance of technology in child development. Rather than framing digital media’s impact as simply harmful or beneficial, it offers a nuanced analysis of how children’s digital experiences are mediated and shaped within familial, social and institutional contexts. Using an ethnographic approach, the authors offer deep insights into how digital media becomes part of young children’s daily lives. This approach presents a multifaceted understanding of children’s digital engagement, accounting not only for their individual capacities but also for the aspirations, anxieties and adaptive responses of the surrounding adults.

Different parenting styles, cultural beliefs, migration backgrounds and family relationships all strongly influence how children use and experience digital media.

Parents’ varying approaches to digital media

One of the book’s key strengths is its attention to diversity. In the chapter “Screen Time”, the authors highlight that children’s engagements with digital media must be interpreted within the context of their specific lived experiences. Different parenting styles, cultural beliefs, migration backgrounds and family relationships all strongly influence how children use and experience digital media. The chapter, “Parents and Digital Media” in the book shows that children’s digital lives depend not just on having technology, but also on the social, economic, and cultural environments where they use it. For example, the authors highlight the varying approaches of parents to digital media.  

Some parents embrace digital technologies as valuable tools for learning, while others see them as useful for expression and creativity. Out of many subjects who were interviewed, parents like Sandra Ross and Linda Palmer use touchscreen activities not just for fun, but to teach their children critical thinking, patience, and reflection. Digital play is encouraged as part of a teaching approach that values creativity and active participation. Meanwhile, some parents, either because they are cautious or not very skilled with technology, closely control or watch their children’s digital media use. These perspectives demonstrate the different views on education and comfort with technology. In the book the The Big Disconnect (2013), authors Catherine Steiner-Adair and Teresa Barker present similar perspective on digital media use by children and how to strike a balance between children’s screen time and their familial relationships as their parents. 

A central idea of the book is “parental ethnotheories” – the unspoken beliefs and ideas that shape how parents manage their children’s use of digital media. These ethnotheories are flexible and change with new experiences. For example, parents who start with strict screen time rules might loosen them when facing challenges like illness, sibling fights, or when they’re feeling tired. This flexibility shows a greater truth about digital parenting: there’s often a gap between what parents hope for and what really happens in daily life. The authors understand this gap with empathy and recognise the emotional effort parents put into managing digital media.

As children get older, their use of digital media moves from basic interactions to more complex ways of expressing themselves and connecting with others.

The book also looks at the challenges of digital parenting in divorced or separated families. Co-parenting across different homes often leads to different rules and tensions around digital media. Children may have to deal with these differences, with devices sometimes helping them stay close to absent parents or becoming a source of conflict. The book shows how digital media can act both as a bridge and a battleground in these family situations.

Wider family influence and educational settings

Beyond the role of parents, the authors include specific chapters to examine how siblings, grandparents, and preschool staff help shape children’s digital lives. Siblings often act as teachers or gatekeepers, showing new apps or helping set screen time limits. Grandparents also have an important role. Sometimes they support parents’ rules, but other times they go against them, like by giving children devices or allowing them to use them without supervision. The book also discusses preschools, where digital media use depends on the school’s goals and teacher training, and often looks very different from how it’s handled at home. This difference highlights the need for better communication between home and preschool to create a more consistent approach to digital media use. Not only should that but the pre-school educators also pay attention to how they are training their children to use digital means of studies in a positive way. Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years (2015) edited by Chip Donohue discusses the effective, appropriate, and intentional use of technology with young children.

A measured approach to children’s media use

The authors deftly explore how children’s use of digital media grows over time in chapters “Infants”, “Toddlers” and “Preschoolers”. Instead of seeing toddlers as passive users, the authors show how young children actively choose apps, explore content, and push against limits. They argue that digital play is an active way for children to build their identities and connect with the world. As children get older, their use of digital media moves from basic interactions to more complex ways of expressing themselves and connecting with others. However, the chapter “The Bases for Diversity in Children’s Digital Experiences” stresses that the quality of digital content, how it’s used, and family dynamics all affect how much digital activities support creativity, learning, or social skills. 

Even though some parents are excited about digital learning tools, the book is cautious, challenging the idea that apps and devices are automatically good. The authors recognise that digital media can help with learning and cultural growth but also warn about problems like bad content, ads, and tricky designs. They call for stronger rules and more responsibility from the industry to make sure digital media helps children instead of taking advantage of them. However, the authors don’t give specific policy recommendations. Instead, they more broadly emphasise protecting children’s privacy, safety, and wellbeing as digital media becomes more commercialised. 

Digital Media Use in Early Childhood is an important addition to research on children and technology. It avoids simple ideas and gives a detailed, realistic view of how children interact with digital media. The authors are careful to include a diverse set of families who participated in this research. Though relatively short, the book provides rich insight into this increasingly relevant topic, and is a must-read both for researchers in developmental psychology, media studies, sociology of education, digital anthropology but also for a more general audience.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Read an article in LSE Research for the World from 2024 by Sonia Livingstone, Young children and technology: what does “good” look like for young children’s digital lives?

Image: Steve Heap on Shutterstock.

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