Quality of interactive media use in early childhood and child development: a multicriteria analysis

Objectives

(1) To develop an index that allows the measurement of the quality of interactive media used by children in early childhood. (2) To verify whether there is an association between the index and cognitive development, expressive language, and fine and gross motor development.

Methods

A quantitative, cross‐sectional, exploratory study with 103 children, aged 24 to 42 months, evaluated by the Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development. The criteria for the index were selected from the literature: (1) media use by parents; (2) time of daily media use; (3) media type; (4) what do you use the media for; (5) who do you use the media with (6) monitoring (limits time, content, interacts during use); (7) purpose of use; (8) parents’ opinion of the media. For development of the multicriteria index, the multi‐attribute utility theory was applied, and Spearman correlation and simple linear regression (p < 0.05) were used to verify the association between the index and child development.

Results

The index showed a positive and significant correlation with child development in the following domains: language (r = 0.40, p < 0.001), cognitive (r = 0.23, p = 0.04), and fine motor = 0.22, p = 0.04). Simple linear regression analysis showed that the use of interactive media accounts for 22% of language development (p < 0.001).

Conclusion

The multicriteria index developed to verify the quality of interactive media used by children in early childhood showed that it has the potential to be used. The positive and significant associations between the quality of interactive media use and child development was verified, mainly regarding language.