Young children's television viewing and the quality of their interactions with parents: A prospective community study

Abstract

Television is one of the most commonly viewed forms of media by children throughout the world. Excessive television viewing can influence the quality of children's relationships and interactions with their parents. We examined the emotional availability (EA) of children toward their parents by assessing child responsiveness and child involvement, using a cross‐sectional and longitudinal design. We employed a large and representative community sample of Norwegian 4‐year‐olds (n = 995) who were followed up at 6 years old (n = 795). The results illustrate that, when viewing excessive amounts of television, children are less likely to be involved with their parents in ordinary toy‐play. We argue in favor of the displacement hypothesis, stating that time‐demanding technologies are negatively related to the quality of parent–child relationships because spending more time watching television will leave less time for developing nurturing social relationships.