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Promoting science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) skills for young children provides foundation for and interest in later STEM learning, making early childhood an important time to develop these competencies. Young children also spend increasing amounts of time with media, and thus it is important to understand if children are accessing STEM content and what factors may determine this access. The current survey study of parents of three- to seven-year olds assesses how parents’ science self-efficacy and parents’ scientific literacy relate to children’s STEM media use. Results demonstrate positive relations between parent self-efficacy and child STEM media use (aligned with self-efficacy theory), but results also demonstrate no significant relation between parent scientific literacy and child STEM media use. We conclude that parent self-efficacy is an important social susceptibility for young children’s STEM media use and that future research should continue exploring potential interventions for promoting parents’ self-efficacy related to teaching their children science.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed school contexts and social opportunities dramatically for adolescents around the world. Thus, certain adolescents may have been more susceptible to the stress of the pandemic as a function of differences in schooling. We present data from 1256 United States adolescents (ages 14-16) to examine how the 2020-2021 school context (in-person, hybrid, or virtual) related to feelings of school satisfaction and success, social connection, mental health, and media use. We also examine differences as a function of gender identity. Results demonstrate that school context, particularly in-person compared to virtual schooling, was related to higher school satisfaction and academic success, stronger feelings of social connection and inclusion, lower levels of anxiety and depression, and less problematic media use. Interestingly, adolescents did seem to use media as a tool to support social connection when in hybrid or virtual school contexts, but they also reported higher rates of problematic media use, thus suggesting that media use needs to be examined more carefully to understand its role as a potential protective mechanism for adolescents' social connection and mental health. These findings provide baseline information about how schools' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic may have created disparities among youth. These findings have implications for current school interventions.

Higher TV exposure has been repeatedly linked to poorer self-regulation among young children. Recent studies show that the use of mobile screen media devices is also negatively related to self-regulation in early childhood. Despite the proliferation of mobile devices in households with young children, it is unclear whether children’s use of smartphones and tablets predicts their self-regulation independently of TV use and parents’ screen media use or when also considering evocative effects of children’s dysregulation. This multimethod, cross-sectional study with a racially diverse sample (N = 72) in the western United States examines parents’ (86.3% mothers) leisure media use and preschool-aged children’s (M = 38.02 months, 55.6% girls, 47.2% racial-ethnic minority) mobile media use, TV use, and dysregulation as predictors of their behavioral battery-assessed self-regulation. As hypothesized, path models show that the amounts of children’s mobile media use, TV use, and dysregulation negatively predict their self-regulation, and mobile media use is a stronger predictor than TV use. We conclude with future directions to yield stronger inferences of screen media effects on child development that can inform interventions and screen time guidelines.

Despite the attention that moral media content has received for many years, no research has systematically investigated the moral foundations featured in (visual) user-generated content. This is important because exposure to moral content may influence the relative salience of different moral foundations among consumers, with implications for their moral decision-making and reasoning. This manual content analysis investigated the prevalence and consistency of the moral foundations represented in the Instagram profiles of the 59 most followed Western celebrities, athletes, and influencers. The study coded 1,256 posts and 2,936 stories, documenting the exemplification of moral foundations and their links with gender, endorser type, platform feature (i.e. stories vs. posts), and presence of emojis. Results from multilevel analyses showed that famous individuals posted more content that upheld than violated moral foundations, with an overrepresentation of care and loyalty content. On average, morally laden content represented one-fifth of the posted content, with most personalities sharing moral content at least once. No difference was observed between posts and stories. Men and athletes featured more loyalty than women, celebrities, and influencers. The representation of moral content, especially care, predicted the use of positive emojis. The theoretical implications for the long-term processes of the MIME are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) skills for young children provides foundation for and interest in later STEM learning, making early childhood an important time to develop these competencies. Young children also spend increasing amounts of time with media, and thus it is important to understand if children are accessing STEM content and what factors may determine this access. The current survey study of parents of three- to seven-year olds assesses how parents' science self-efficacy and parents' scientific literacy relate to children's STEM media use. Results demonstrate positive relations between parent self-efficacy and child STEM media use (aligned with self-efficacy theory), but results also demonstrate no significant relation between parent scientific literacy and child STEM media use. We conclude that parent self-efficacy is an important social susceptibility for young children's STEM media use and that future research should continue exploring potential interventions for promoting parents' self-efficacy related to teaching their children science. Impact Summary: Prior State of Knowledge: Little research has examined the relations between parents' perceived beliefs that they can teach their children science and children's engagement with STEM media. Children spend increasing time with media; thus, we should understand how to leverage this time for learning. Novel Contributions: The current study demonstrates that parents' beliefs that they can teach their children science are positively associated with children's STEM media use. However, parents' scientific literacy was not associated with children's STEM media use. Practical Implications: To get children to use more STEM media, interventions should focus on parents' beliefs that they can teach their children STEM concepts, such as science. Parents influence children's media use, and intervening with parents can help shape children's media diets in positive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the present study was to test how two design features common in young children’s prosocial media content, particularly inclusion lessons, affect children’s emotional, narrative, and moral lesson comprehension. Specifically, we tested if children’s comprehension differed based on whether characters were humans or dogs, and whether inclusion was modeled for approximately 80% of the show or 20% of the show. We also examined if experimental effects differed based on the type of comprehension measured. Using data collected from 98 children in the United States (ages 3–8 years), we found that, generally, children comprehended better when characters were humans, compared with dogs, and when inclusion was modeled for 80% of the show, relative to only 20% of the show, although these findings were less consistent. We also noted age effects where, in general, older children comprehended better than younger children, and were aided through the use of human characters. We discuss the practical implications of this work in terms of how to best design prosocial media to support children’s comprehension, as well as the theoretical implications in terms of thinking about children’s cognitive capacities and when to measure different forms of comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by Moral Foundations Theory and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME), we examined the relationships between parents' moral foundation salience and their attitudes and motivations toward using educational media with their young children (N = 449; child ages 4–7 years). Although research has shown that individuals' moral foundation salience predicts their own liking and selection of media, research has not considered these processes across parents and their children. Results showed distinct patterns of relationships between parents' different moral foundation saliences and their attitudes and motivations toward using educational media with their young children. Specifically, care and fairness were positively related to attitudes toward children's educational media. Additionally, care, fairness, and authority were each positively related to parents' motivations to use media with their children for educational benefits. Finally, care was related to more positive attitudes toward educational media, relative to entertainment media, whereas loyalty and authority were related to more positive attitudes toward entertainment media, relative to educational media. In this way, we extend the MIME by showing that parents' moral saliences can relate to how parents think about the media use of their children, with practical implications for the media ecology of the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently forwarded Personal Social Media Ecosystem Framework (PSMEF) allows researchers to study social media in terms of generalized types of user interfaces. This study formally extended the PSMEF via the Digital User Interface Model and replicated previous work by evidencing the existence of new (e.g. Overtly Algorithmic Content Pages) and validating previously identified types of user interfaces (e.g. Home Pages and Chats/Messages) that make up individuals' personal social media environments. Using topic modeling (i.e. Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and a novel mixed methods approach (i.e. schematic semantic network analysis), we quantitatively evidenced four distinct classes of user interfaces based on open-ended descriptions that participants provided for six popular social media platforms (i.e. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube). Results inform on the qualitative differences between distinct user interface classes that underwrite users' experiences over social media, with implications for conceptualization and operationalization related to social media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid proliferation and maturation of social media platforms have led to numerous challenges in understanding the correlates of social media use among users. To advance this research, the present article proposes a new way to think about social media with the Personal Social Media Ecosystem Framework (PSMEF). This perspective defines social media as a user-centric digital environment made up of a central set of individual, yet interrelated digital spaces (e.g. in-app pages) that are themselves embedded within a broader ecology (e.g. operating system, the Internet, offline contexts). By leveraging the PSMEF and data from focus groups involving adolescent participants (N  =   59), we identify a core subset of salient environmental contexts within participants' PSMEs that can generalize across platforms, which are differentially associated with popular social media platforms. The theoretical and practical implications of this work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a recent increase in television programming that aims to provide realistic portrayals of adolescent life in an effort to both entertain and educate adolescent viewers. Research on this entertainment-education programming has examined the effects on adolescent viewers; however, it has not considered the relationship between parent viewing of such programming and their perceived knowledge about adolescent life. Further, it is possible that parent viewing of entertainment-education programming can relate to parental efficacy indirectly via their perceived knowledge about adolescent life. We test these relationships using data from 1,880 parent viewers and non-viewers (adolescent children ages 13–17) of the series 13 Reasons Why sampled from Brazil, Australia/New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Results suggest an indirect relationship between parent viewership of the series and parental efficacy, via parental perceived knowledge, among parents who viewed the entire first season in comparison to those who only viewed some episodes. There were direct relationships between viewing and parental efficacy when comparing those who viewed all episodes to non-viewing parents. These findings suggest that entertainment-education programming may relate to positive outcomes among parents, with implications for the family ecology. IMPACT SUMMARY a. Prior State of Knowledge: The genre of entertainment-education programming (EE) includes programs that provide realistic portrayals of adolescent life including portrayals of sensitive topics. Prior examinations of adolescent-directed EE consider effects on adolescent viewers but do not consider the effect on parent viewers. b. Novel Contributions: Results suggest an indirect relationship between parent viewership of the Netflix produced series, 13 Reasons Why, and parental efficacy, via parental perceived knowledge. These findings occur among parents who viewed the entire first season of the series in four global regions. c. Practical Implications: These findings suggest that EE programming may relate to positive outcomes among parent viewers and have larger implications for the family ecology by bolstering parental efficacy and perceived knowledge about adolescent life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media programing addressing controversial topics among youth has grown; however, research has yet to consider the correlates of viewing on a global scale. Using the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB), this study examined perceived norms about mental illness among a sample of 3,520 adolescent and young adult viewers and nonviewers of 13 Reasons Why in Australia/New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Brazil. We assessed the influence of viewer age and culture on the association between descriptive and injunctive mental illness norms and reports of prosocial mental health-related behaviors (e.g., talking about suicide with others). Results indicated a positive association between the number of episodes viewed and perceived norms, and among viewers, descriptive and injunctive norms related to reports of mental health-related behavior change in all regions, although the process differed based on age and culture. We conclude with implications for the predictions of the TNSB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has considered how exposure to certain media content affects children's Theory of Mind (ToM). It is possible, however, that ToM also moderates the effects of exposure to televised narratives on children's behavior. Previous work found that special inserts, designed to help children understand an inclusion message, were somewhat effective in promoting children's comprehension of the moral lesson. Such inserts, however, may be most effective in promoting inclusion among children lowest in ToM, who would theoretically be least likely to engage in prosocial behaviors. To test this possibility, we use data collected from four- to six-year-old children in the Netherlands (N = 66). We randomly assigned children to one of three conditions: a control, a treatment condition with general information inserts, and a treatment condition with explicit moral lesson inserts. Results indicate that children's prosocial intentions mediate the relationship between condition and stigmatization, but only among children in the explicit condition lowest in ToM. This suggests that explicit inserts can help children low in ToM to learn from inclusion narratives. Comprehension of the moral lesson did not mediate this relationship. We integrate these findings with existing research, discussing overall conclusions in the context of child development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]