Most children under age 4 use mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, according to a new study. Published in the journal Pediatrics, the research also found that socioeconomic factors no longer limit accessibility to the devices as was previously thought.
The study was undertaken to learn more about how often and at what age younger children were beginning to use mobile devices. “We looked at how young children, ages four and under, used mobile media,” co-author Matilde Irigoyen, MD, chair of pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, told CBS. “I was surprised by some of the findings,” she admitted.
For the study, Irigoyen and her colleagues surveyed the parents of 350 children between the ages of 6 months and 4 years of age who visited a pediatric clinic in a low-income minority community in Philadelphia in 2014. The survey included questions about the presence of and their children’s use of television, mobile devices, computers and video games.
Findings showed that 97 percent of the households had a television, 83 percent had tablets and 77 percent had smartphones. In addition, more than half the households had video consoles, computers and Internet access. Almost every parent and child in the survey had access to a mobile device, including children of surprisingly young ages.
Results showed that 44 percent of the children under the age of 1 used a mobile device daily to play games, watch videos or use apps. By the time the children were 2, use jumped to 77 percent. By age 2, 25 percent could use the device with no help, and by age 4 half the kids were self-sufficient on a device.
The study also showed that the older the children were, the more likely they were to have their own devices. By age 4, three-quarters of the children owned a device – primarily a tablet – and half the 4-year-olds had their own TV.
“We were not surprised to see infants and toddlers using the mobile devices, we saw that in the clinic every day,” Irigoyen told HealthDay. “But we were very surprised to see how often the children used the mobile devices, how many of them owned a personal device, how many could use the device without assistance, and how many engaged in media multitasking.”
The study also sought to determine under what circumstances parents let their children use mobile devices. Seventy percent of the parents reported letting their kids use the devices so they could get chores done, 65 percent let them use the devices in public places to keep them calm, and 28 percent used them to put their children to sleep.
One healthcare expert expressed concern about these findings. “Parents in this study admitted to using mobile media for their children to keep them quiet or entertained in public places or in place of the interaction at bedtime,” Danelle Fisher, MD, vice chair of pediatrics at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., told HealthDay. “Children need parental interaction for many reasons, and this trend, is overall, worrisome.”
The study authors acknowledged that their findings “do not address the impact that mobile media devices have on children and families,” but share Fisher’s worries. “The high proportion of young children with their own mobile device was of particular concern because little is known about how children’s independent activity on mobile devices affects their cognitive, social and emotional development,” they said in an AAP news release.
