Grandparents and children’s media use in the USA: Screen time, mediation practices, and relationship outcomes

Abstract

Grandparents are playing an increasingly important role as caregivers for their grandchildren, which includes managing their media use. However, research about grandparents and children’s media use is very limited, particularly in the U.S.A. and including grandfathers. To address this scarcity of research, the present study looked at children’s screen time under their grandparents’ watch; grandparental media mediation strategies and their predictors, and how grandparents’ beliefs about media relate to disagreement with their adult child and grandparent-parent relationship satisfaction. Through a survey among 350 American grandparents who regularly care for at least one grandchild aged between 2 and 10 years, results showed that grandchildren’s screen time represented 49% of the total time they spent under their grandparents’ care; that, to manage their grandchild’s media use, grandparents favor supervision, over instructive and restrictive mediation, with co-use/viewing the least used strategy, and that grandparents’ digital skills consistently predicted more media mediation. Additionally, it was found that grandparents’ negative attitudes toward media predicted media-related disagreements with their adult children and that these disagreements were related to lower grandparent-parent relationship satisfaction.