From “screen time” to screen times: Measuring the temporality of media use in the messy reality of family life

Study design

This article reports the first findings of a longitudinal qualitative research project involving 20 families with at least one child aged eight or younger in Italy, aimed at investigating the datafication of childhood and family life as a socially situated, everyday, and embodied experience. Families were recruited using a snowball sampling technique – i. e., we asked colleagues and acquaintances to distribute digital and printed flyers illustrating the scope of the project in both their workplaces (hospitals, call centres) and online circles (Facebook or WhatsApp local parenting groups). While small in number, the sample (Table 1) represents a diverse demographic range in terms of income, family structure (many having multiple children ranging from zero to 14 years old), ethnic background, and religious participation.

In the first wave of data collection (November–December 2021), families were interviewed at home based on the following protocol: First, parents and children were involved in an ice-breaking activity (a card game showing pictures of everyday activities that children, with the help of their parents, would sort out to tell about their everyday routines); next, one researcher followed the child in a toy and digital media tour (Plowman and Stevenson, 2013), while a second researcher interviewed parents about the family’s media practices, parental mediation, their expectations and fears around digital media and IoTs. In the second wave (April–May 2022), the researchers conducted group interviews at home, using the map drawing method (Watson et al., 2022). Parents and children were instructed to draw a map of their homes, visualise the digital media in each room on a blank paper, and mark, with different colours or arrows, who mostly used which media, and how some media moved across various spatial trajectories during a typical day. Each interviewee was invited to present their map to the researchers. The maps, then, served as visual prompts to stimulate discussion among family members about family routines and power relations around media and material space.

At the end of the second interview, parents were invited to fill out a digital media diary on the MeTag^[1] app for one week. They were asked to record the selected child’s (see Table 1) interactions with digital media each day, indicating the device used (through a predefined list), the start time and duration of media use, the practice (e. g., watching videos), the context (e. g., the living room, bedroom), and with whom (e. g. parents, siblings, nanny, grandparents) (Mascheroni and Zaffaroni, 2022). The parent responsible for filling out the diary was our contact person, usually the mother. In total, only 17 diaries were completed. Reasons for not filling out the media diaries varied from no media use to report in the selected week (Family 5), technical problems with downloading the app (Family 14), or dropout after the interview (Family 1). The diaries were discussed with families in the last and third visit in December 2022–January 2023.

Data analysis

This article reports only on the interview data from two family visits (N = 39), and the media diaries (N = 17). Interviews were transcribed and analysed using constructivist grounded theory (CGT) (Charmaz, 2014), which is an inductive, iterative and comparative methodology. In fact, CGT involves a recursive approach to data collection and analysis, whereby each round of data collection is informed by previous data collection and analysis.

In line with CGT, the research team conducted an iterative data analysis process. First, an interview transcript was coded independently by each researcher, using line-by-line coding. The resulting codes were compared to identify any discrepancies in data interpretation. Afterwards, a shared code sheet was adopted which informed the second stage of analysis, when the interviews were coded independently by researchers. The process was iterative and the shared code sheet enriched and revised until each coder was satisfied. Then, the coded transcripts were aggregated into a single shared MaxQDA file. Finally, the lead researcher examined all coded transcripts and finalised a second-level coding by revising codes and aggregating them into broader codes, summarising the main themes that emerged from interviews – including daily routines, device biographies, digital skills, media ensemble, media practices, parental mediation, parenting, peer group, risks, scaffolding, school, screen time, sharenting, smart speakers, technological imaginaries, and COVID-19 impacts.

Figure 1:

Media diaries.

MeTag data were analysed by aggregating the diaries produced by each family – originally available as a spreadsheet – into a single anonymised dataset. In order to compare the results across the participating families, the data were analysed using descriptive statistics, and processed into detailed visualisations using RAWGraph and vector graphics editing software. The visualisations helped identify and compare the main patterns of media (co-)use within different families. The data and visualisations from the media diaries were interpreted and analysed in conjunction with the analysis of interviews. Data triangulation allowed researchers to situate temporal routines within the meaning-making processes and media practices taking place in each household.

Digital media in the everyday life of young children and their families

Digital media maintain a significant presence in the lives of young Italian children and their families. In fact, families report an average of 60 minutes of screen time on weekdays and 108 minutes on weekends. Yet, there are huge variations in the use of digital media across families: In some families children’s media use is more sporadic and shorter, in others it is more regular and lengthier (Table 2). There are also a few cases where children’s media use is concentrated in the weekend (Family 4), at least during the monitoring period. While the total amount and distribution of screen time varies across families and days of the week, regularities emerge in relation to the temporality of media use: During weekdays, children’s media time is concentrated in the evening (Figure 1). In fact, all the participating children live busy lives, finishing school or kindergarten after 4 pm. Many also spend time outdoors, participate in after-school programmes or sport activities. Therefore, as explained by parents during the interviews, children are allowed some media time when they return home, after six pm. Occasionally, children are allowed to watch television after dinner, together with their parents (as in Family 6). Sometimes (Family 6, 8, 13) children are also allowed to watch cartoons in the morning, during or after breakfast, while parents are busy getting dressed or completing household chores.

Across families, screen time increases over the weekend. This is also when most co-viewing takes place (Figure 2). In fact, children mostly use media individually or with their siblings, but without adult supervision or parents’ active engagement, during weekdays. For example, both brothers (aged 6 and 8) in Family 11 are passionate gamers and will play Fortnite together, each on their own Xbox console. Family 9 is a traditional religious family with seven children, with an age range spanning from 18 months to 14 years at the time of our first visit. Except for the oldest daughter and the youngest son, the siblings are used to watching movies and cartoons together. The father explains how, for them, media time is family time for siblings to share, with the second daughter (aged 12) also having a monitoring role:

Figure 2:

Individual use vs. co-use (with parents and/or siblings).

Mirtilla [12 years old], instead, monitors her brothers because she also likes those cartoons, she is a big baby. So, yes, she helps out. One screen at the time, not like my parents who have a TV screen in every room. Here, either you watch something together or you do something else. You don’t like it? Then read a book. (Severus Piton, father, Family 9)

Occasionally, the father joins them, especially on weekends and when they are watching movies for the first time, such as Harry Potter or Star Wars. At the same time, the selected child is granted more individual use (tablet) from the first and the second time visit, as reflected in Figure 2.

It comes with no surprise that family media time with parents, such as watching movies together, is usually concentrated on Friday evenings and weekends. Family 14, for example, is a family of four children of different ages – the youngest being 3 and the oldest 12. Yet, the mother recounts that, despite different tastes, they still manage to find movies that everyone likes to watch together in the weekend.

The data reported by parents in the app-based media diary do not show a linear association between co-use and increased children’s screen time, as documented instead in most survey-based studies (Elias and Sulkin, 2017). Rather, the child who displays more regular and lengthier screen time exposure (Family 13) uses media almost exclusively on his own:

It is mainly individual, he plays a little with his dad, or with me, especially when we first bought him a Nintendo Switch, we used to play Mario Bros or Mario Kart together, so, yes, we have been using it together … But then, now it’s been over a month, yes, a month more or less, that [it’s] only been Minecraft. Sometimes his dad plays it, or they play a cooking game together. But mainly on his own. When friends visit, he shows them Minecraft, yes. (Pamela, mother, Family 13)

Additionally, children’s screen time is not higher than average in single-parent families (families 8, 12, 16, 17), except for Family 8, where indeed screen time – with father and son playing videogames together even after dinner – was reported by the mother as a major source of conflict with her ex-husband.

Whereas MeTag data show a significant amount of daily media time in certain families, during the interviews parents tended to minimise the role of media in their children’s and their own daily lives, emphasising, by contrast, the wide variety of outdoor activities their children do, as the following excerpt shows. Both parents in Family 11 agree that their children have little time for Fortnite:

During the week they go to school, from Monday to Friday. They come back, on Monday and Tuesday they even come home at 7 pm, because they practise sports in the afternoon. So it is really three afternoons, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday that, once back home, they have time to play. On Saturdays and Sundays we try to spend time outdoors, so it’s really only three afternoons. (Malika, mother, Family 11)

The emphasis on allowing little media time during weekdays signals that screen time is a source of anxiety and concern for many, as we shall see later; or, at least, that parents are aware of the social construction of screen time as a signifier of “good parenting.”

Defining and avoiding “excessive” screen time

Since it is hard for parents to pin down and quantify the exact amount of viewing or playing time their children are allowed, definitions of “appropriate” screen time for children are typically implicit and made by comparison with what is perceived as “excessive” exposure to screen. The comparison is mostly made with the 2020 lockdowns, acknowledged by all our interviewees as an exceptional circumstance, under which all habitual practices and norms were radically disrupted. No surprise, then, that even in most restrictive families where children are only occasionally allowed screen time, their viewing time increased and became more regular when both parents were working from home and no childcare was available:

Their normal routine was disrupted, as there were no more pre-school or extracurricular activities, so the 8, 9, 10 hours usually spent in between school/playground/swimming pool needed to be filled in. So, they have done a lot of alternative activities, but an hour or so of watching TV each day was part of her daily routine. (Carlo, father, Family 5)

Similarly, families who had never been particularly restrictive, acknowledge the disruption of prior daily routines during the lockdown as a turning point, after which their child’s media use became more intense, although now more regulated:

Nicola (father, Family 6): You know the half an hour, an hour per day limitation? We’ve never had that. But then [during the lockdown] any potential barrier fell down …

Gabriella (mother, Family 6): Because, you know, we both had to work and he was often in front of TV.

Nicola: Yes, he was at home, and we often had Zoom meetings at the same time. All three of us were at home: one in the bedroom, the other here [kitchen] or there [the living room] and so if he could not play alone in his room, he was here with us and one had to give him something and TV was fully legitimised. Not that I have ever been particularly concerned but … we haven’t really decided, it just happened. And then we maintained it [screen time] with some limitations.

In our conversations with parents, screen time always emerged as a focus of parental attention, if not concern. As the excerpt above shows, even parents who do not share anxieties about the harmful effects of screen time, are seemingly aware of the social discourses around limiting exposure to screens as a sign of responsible parenting. Other families show a more profound appropriation of the social discourses around screen time. The reason for their closer adherence to the tropes and prescriptions of screen time discourses, exemplified by their mastery of the medical language, lies in personal experiences – with their young children experiencing withdrawal in front of screens, or emotional distress and temper tantrums when deprived of screens – or in the advice received from peer contacts and expert knowledge, or, more often, a combination of the two. For example, Letizia (Family 8) introduced the smartphone to Ludovico when he was a toddler, to keep him calm watching nursery rhymes while on the changing mat. However, she soon realised that the boy was distressed whenever she put an end to his watching time. Since then, she has “always avoided to socialise him to iPads, computers, smartphones and stuff, because of how upset he was.” For Filippo and Ludmilla (Family 4), parents of Olivia (4 years old), it was a combination of first-hand experience and expert advice. Indeed, during the first interview they recounted how they resolved to forbid the use of the tablet after her violent emotional reactions when she was told it was time to stop:

Ludmilla (mother, Family 4): There was a period when she started using the iPad on a regular basis, I mean, we are used to watching cartoons and we now watch them on TV only, but before we alternated the TV and the iPad. But we decided to rule out the iPad, because she watched it for an hour, but it was never enough, “Olivia, stop now!”, “No, more.” She watched it for half an hour … “No, more!”, two hours, and then she flipped out, yelling. So I said, since the more you watch it the more you get hysterical, we will erase it altogether. So we have completely ruled it out. Punishment, no more iPad …

Filippo (father, Family 4): She was ostensibly upset …

Ludmilla: Yes, really upset, it was hard to take it away.

Filippo: I remember we have also read a piece on Internazionale [weekly current affairs magazine] that advised us on such issues.

Later on during the interview, Ludmilla found the article her husband was referring to, which she had shared on her Facebook profile, and proudly announced to the researchers that it was entitled “How harmful to children is screen time.” Along the same line, Camilla, Alessandro’s (5 years old, Family 19) mother, recounted being informed about the harmful neural effects of screen time when the family was on holiday in Sicily and she used her smartphone as a pacifier to keep her active child safe from cars:

Camilla (mother, Family 19): Alessandro could not help moving around, so I was anxious – first because he barely ate and then, especially, because there were cars all around the place. So at some point, given that I am not young anymore, I thought “I am going to have an heart attack unless I keep him seated at the table.” So I handed him my phone. “Are you insane?” this acquaintance told me, “the phone works on the same receptors as cocaine, it’s like drugs, it is poison, it triggers reactions,” and I trusted him …

Interviewer: Was he a physician?

Camilla: No, no … but his ex-wife was a developmental psychologist, so it was probably true. At that moment I replied, “Look, I’d rather keep him here than fearing he will be injured by a car.” But then I started to note his violent reactions when you take the phone away, and thought, “it must have been true.” And now after 20 minutes I’ll take the phone away.

Conversely, Caterina, Rubina’s mother (8 years old, Family 17), has never experienced any “excessive screen time” effects on her daughter, but was influenced by social discourses. In fact, she told the interviewers how she has always kept the television on, as a background noise, on the advice of physicians to assist her daughter’s recovery from a small auditory impairment at birth. Accordingly, she had developed a positive attitude towards screen media. Yet, when Rubina was in her first year in kindergarten (aged 3), Caterina was scared by the pre-school educators who warned her about the risks of withdrawal, with “children always with the phone in their hands, no longer able to have a grip on reality.” Hence, when the tablet eventually broke, she never replaced it, until Rubina, then already in primary school, needed a personal device to participate in remote learning activities during lockdowns.

As these families’ experiences show, the “screen time” discourse is not only a normative device, that comes with a set of moral judgements and social stigma, through which parents are encouraged to conform to the “good parent” ideal. Screen time is also a performative tool, which provides parents with practical advice, a list of ready-made “best practices” on how to regulate children’s exposure to screen media. In fact, when restrictions to media use are applied, these are primarily directed at limiting screen time, and, secondarily, at limiting access to perceived inappropriate content – violent, aggressive behaviour for example. Common strategies to reduce screen time involve the use of an egg timer (Family 4), or a wall clock (whereby the child shall stop when the longer hand reaches a certain hour, as in Family 7 and 10), or parental controls and screen time settings that restrict internet access on the smartphone to certain time intervals (for teenage sisters in Family 9) or limit the length of use of certain apps (Family 20); families report also using the number of episodes of a children’s TV series as a strategy to limit screen time (for example children in Family 14 report being allowed to watch two episodes of Gormiti before dinner). It is also common to define certain time slots as media-free: typically after dinner or before going to school. Interestingly, indeed, when parents report applying little time restrictions to their children’s media use, they rather turn to restricting content that favours prolonged exposure to screens. Restricting content, then, becomes an indirect way to restrict time, as Giovanni’s father, Aldo (Family 10) suggests when he talks about what he dislikes about YouTube:

YouTube is practically like television … As soon as you finish watching something a new video starts, and then another one … and it is YouTube that decides what you’re going to watch. You have the illusion of choice, but you are offered the same content over and over again, so you watch rubbish and, next, something even more stupid. And you end up watching nonsense videos for two consecutive hours, where nothing happens really. And I don’t like it, I don’t like him being hypnotised for two hours in front of nothing. (Aldo, father, Family 10)

A further strategy to limit screen time is to provide children with a busy schedule of outdoor, sport, and creative activities. For example, after COVID-19 restrictions ended, Family 5 returned to their usual routine of sporadic screen time and little access to digital media:

The easiest rule is to avoid having any devices, that is the rule that nips the problem in the bud [laughing] … Filling their time with alternative activities is another strategy that works. Then, it happens, I am not saying they are completely … (Carlo, father, Family 5)

However, restricting screen time is challenging, because strict rules clash with parents’ parenting cultures, technological imaginaries, and, last but not least, with their busy daily schedules, as we shall discuss next.

Balancing the convenience of digital media and anxieties around excessive screen time

Parents in our study report engaging in “screen-assisted parenting” practices (Elias and Sulkin, 2019), including using media as digital babysitters or digital pacifiers, or as rewards/punishment for the child’s behaviour. Parents discuss the same motivations for turning to media as digital babysitters or pacifiers that have already been identified by studies adopting a Uses and Gratifications approach (Bar Lev et al., 2018; Beyens and Eggermont, 2014; Elias and Sulkin, 2019), namely, keeping the child occupied during work or meal preparation, calming them down when annoyed or bored, using screens to facilitate mealtimes. In most families, for example, children are allowed some viewing time before dinner, so that parents can get on with cooking and setting the table, as the following excerpts show:

We get home, take a shower, wear pyjamas and then they watch TV while I prepare [dinner]. This is our routine. Then, the rule is that the TV must be turned off while we eat. (Alice, mother, Family 16)

Aldo (father, Family 10): When are you allowed to watch TV, Giovanni? Tell the researchers yourself.

Giovanni (7 years old): Dunno …

Aldo: […] When mum or dad are?

Giovanni: Working?

Aldo: Noo!

Lisa (mother): Cooking!

Parents also recount using mobile media as digital pacifiers, to keep children quiet in public places such as restaurants, and potentially distressing situations such as standing in a queue. However, parents express more reservations about using screen time to keep their children quiet, describing it as a “last resort.” The following excerpts suggest parents feel guilty and inadequate for turning to screen-assisted practices outside of the home:

Yes, when we are out it may happen that he asks for my smartphone, but only if we are in a situation that is extremely boring for him. Dunno, if we are standing in the queue at the bank, for example, he would ask for it. But it doesn’t happen very often because I tend to avoid situations where he is put on hold, because it is tremendously stressful. (Pamela, mother, Family 13)

I try to set limits, because we have realised that within 20 minutes, if he uses it too much, then when you take it away he gets mad. The smartphone is really the last … resort. It happens, when we go at a restaurant for example. (Camilla, mother, Family 19)

Screen time rules, on the other side, are also employed as a motivational reward or, more often, punishment. Many parents confessed “threatening” their children to confiscate tablets and smartphones, as Pamela (mother, Family 13) described it, in order to maintain discipline. And Pamela adds that “using threats is an awful childrearing strategy,” demonstrating awareness of the discrepancy between ideal and actual parenting practices. Sara (Family 18), mother of Eva (8) and Beatrice (10), admits that “the first punishment I give is no more screens, television, tablet, etc.” However, not only using screen time as a reward or punishment is dissonant with respect to the “good parenting” discourses; it has its own costs, and it is often counterproductive, as Maria, mother of two children aged 5 and 2, explains:

It is not really the reward and punishment … it is that sometimes – wrongly I must say, and this is why he later picks this same trick to blackmail us – “If you do not eat dinner, I will turn the TV off,” “If you don’t … I won’t let you use the tablet later,” such things. Because eventually … he does the same thing. “I won’t eat unless you let me watch TV.” (Maria, mother, Family, 7)

As the last excerpts suggest, parents do not take screen-assisted parenting practices lightly: Feelings of guilt and inadequacy for failing to conform to more socially legitimised parental mediation practices, and a great deal of uncertainty about the effectiveness and problematic consequences of using digital media as babysitters, pacifiers or punishment dominate their accounts. Research within the Uses and Gratifications framework has argued that, in order to avoid the dissonance between screen time anxieties and everyday life realities, parents develop more positive attitudes towards screen media (Bar Lev et al., 2018). In our sample we have not observed such a linear relationship between practices and attitudes. Rather, parents, especially mothers, refer to broader social and cultural changes, pointing to how childhood has become mediatised, how they struggle to balance work and family life, and have to squeeze childrearing in between a variety of conflicting commitments. Serena (mother, Family 15) and her husband both work in a call centre, but she still works from home a couple of days a week. She emphasises the force of habit in turning to television (actually YouTube videos) as a digital babysitter:

Compared to my generation, nowadays children are much more into technology. Perhaps it is also our mistake, that whenever we have something else to do, we place him in front of television. We have always done it. (Serena, mother, Family 15)

Camilla, a part-time worker from a wealthy family (Family 19), has often relied on screen-assisted parenting, especially to facilitate mealtimes. She recounts how the TV in the living rooms is turned on during family meals, so that her son can move “back and forth” and eat at least a little food. Overall, she adopts a pragmatic approach to her son’s media use, which rests upon her confidence that providing alternative stimulating experiences would compensate for screen time. Notwithstanding her son’s temper tantrums when he was younger, she minimises the potentially harmful effects of exposure to screens, thanks to the cultural, social and economic resources she can mobilise to counter potential screen time negative effects:

Yes but truth is … television is a great babysitter, so occasionally … I work a part-time job, but I have a lot of other things to do to manage the household. Before, I also took care of my mother, so I managed her administration, and then, when you have to reply to work emails, and stuff, television is helpful … So I tend to believe that if he turns out smart he will be smart even if he watches TV, if he is dumb he is dumb anyway, don’t you agree? (Camilla, mother, Family 19)