Digital media availability has surged over the past decade. Because of a lack of comprehensive measurement tools, this rapid growth in access to digital media is accompanied by a scarcity of research examining the family media context and sociocognitive outcomes. There is also little cross-cultural research in families with young children. Modern media are mobile, interactive, and often short in duration, making them difficult to remember when caregivers respond to surveys about media use. The Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure (CAFE) Consortium has developed a novel tool to measure household media use through a web-based questionnaire, time-use diary, and passive-sensing app installed on family mobile devices. The goal of developing a comprehensive assessment of family media exposure was to take into account the contextual factors of media use and improve upon the limitations of existing self-report measures, while creating a consistent, scalable, and cost-effective tool. The CAFE tool captures the content and context of early media exposure and addresses the limitations of prior media measurement approaches. Preliminary data collected using this measure have been integrated into a shared visualization platform. In this perspective article, we take a tools-of-the-trade approach (Oakes, 2010) to describe four challenges associated with measuring household media exposure in families with young children: measuring attitudes and practices; capturing content and context; measuring short bursts of mobile device usage; and integrating data to capture the complexity of household media usage. We illustrate how each of these challenges can be addressed with preliminary data collected with the CAFE tool and visualized on our dashboard. We conclude with future directions including plans to test reliability, validity, and generalizability of these measures.

Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Ruhr University Bochum Bochum Germany

Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology Sapienza University of Rome Rome Italy

Department of Education University of Stavanger Stavanger Norway

Department of Human Development and Family Studies Purdue University West Lafayette IN United States

Department of Pediatrics University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI United States

Department of Psychology Georgetown University Washington DC United States

Division of Psychology Linköping University Linköping Sweden

Human Development and Family Studies University of Wisconsin Madison Madison WI United States

Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship Charles University Prague Czechia

Learning Research and Development Center University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh PA United States

OpenLattice Inc Redwood City CA United States

School of Communication and Media University of New York Prague Prague Czechia

School of Family Life Brigham Young University Provo UT United States

See more in PubMed

Abidin R. R. (1995). Parenting Stress Index: Professional Manual, 3rd Edn Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc.

Acevedo-Polakovich I. D., Lorch E. P., Milich R., Ashby R. D. (2006). Disentangling the relation between television viewing and cognitive processes in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and comparison children. Arch. Pediatric. Adolesc. Med. 160 354–360. PubMed

Anand S., Krosnick J. (2005). Demographic predictors of media use among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Am. Behav. Sci. 48 539–561. 10.1177/0002764204271512 DOI

Anderson D. R., Field D. E., Collins P. A., Lorch E. P., Nathan J. G. (1985). Estimates of young children’s time with television: a methodological comparison of parent reports with time-lapse video home observation. Child Dev. 56 1345–1357. PubMed

Anderson D. R., Hanson K. G. (2017). Screen Media and Parent-Child Interactions. Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood: The Effect of Content and Context on Learning and Development. New York, NY: Springer, 173–194.

Anderson D. R., Kirkorian H. L. (2015). “Media and cognitive development,” in Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, 7th Edn, eds Lerner R. M., Liben L. S., Mueller U. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley; ), 949–994. 10.1002/9781118963418.childpsy222 DOI

Barr R., Linebarger D. L. (eds) (2017). Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood: The Effect of Content and Context on Learning and Development. New York, NY: Springer.

Bayer J. B., Campbell S. W. (2012). Texting while driving on automatic: considering the frequency-independent side of habit. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28 2083–2090. 10.1016/j.chb.2012.06.012 DOI

Bayer J. B., Dal Cin S., Campbell S. W., Panek E. (2016). Consciousness and self-regulation in mobile communication. Hum. Commun. Res. 42 71–97. 10.1111/hcre.12067 DOI

Bleakley A., Jordan A. B., Hennessy M. (2013). The relationship between parents’ and children’s television viewing. Pediatrics 132 364–371. PubMed

Bronfenbrenner U., Morris P. A. (2006). “The bioecological model of human development,” in Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical Models of Human Development, eds Lerner R. M., Damon W. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc; ), 793–828.

Burns J. J., Anderson D. R. (1993). Attentional inertia and recognition memory in adult television viewing. Commun. Res. 20 777–799. 10.1177/009365093020006002 DOI

Calvert S., Rideout V., Woolard J., Barr R., Strouse G. (2005). Age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic patterns in early computer use: a national survey. Am. Behav. Sci. 48 590–607. 10.1177/0002764204271508 DOI

Chaudron S. (2015). Young Children (0-8) and Digital Technology: A Qualitative Exploratory Study Across Seven Countries. Brussels: Publications Office of the European Union.

Cheung C. H. M., Bedford R., Saez De Urabain I. R., Karmiloff-Smith A., Tim J., Smith T. J. (2017). Daily touchscreen use in infants and toddlers is associated with reduced sleep and delayed sleep onset. Sci. Rep. 7:46104. PubMed PMC

Christakis D. A., Zimmerman F. J., DiGiuseppe D. L., McCarty C. A. (2004). Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. Pediatrics 113 708–713. 10.1542/peds.113.4.708 PubMed DOI

Connell S. L., Lauricella A. R., Wartella E. (2015). Parental co-use of media technology with their parents in the U.S.A. J. Child. Media 9 5–21. 10.1080/17482798.2015.997440 DOI

Dinleyici M., Carman K. B., Ozturk E., Sahin-Dagli F. (2016). Media Use by Children, and Parents’. Views on Children’s Media Usage. Interact. J. Med. Res. 5:e18. 10.2196/ijmr.5668 PubMed DOI PMC

Domoff S. E., Radesky J. S., Harrison K., Riley H., Lumeng J. C., Miller A. L. (2018). A naturalistic study of child and family screen media and mobile device use. J. Child Fam. Stud. 28 401–410. 10.1007/s10826-018-1275-1 PubMed DOI PMC

Elhai J. D., Tiamiyu M. F., Weeks J. W., Levine J. C., Picard K. J., Hall B. J. (2018). Depression and emotion regulation predict objective smartphone use measured over one week. Pers. Individ. Differ. 133 21–28. 10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.051 DOI

Fedele D. A., McConville A., Moon J., Thomas J. G. (2019). Topical review: design considerations when creating pediatric mobile health interventions: applying the IDEAS framework. J. Pediatr. Psychol. 44 343–348. 10.1093/jpepsy/jsy084 PubMed DOI PMC

Fenson L., Pethick S., Renda C., Cox J. L., Dale P. S., Reznick J. S. (2000). Short-form versions of the MacArthur communicative development inventories. Appl. Psycholinguist. 21 95–116. 10.1017/s0142716400001053 DOI

Fikkers K. M., Piotrowski J. T., Valkenburg P. M. (2017). A matter of style? Exploring the effects of parental mediation styles on early adolescents’ media violence exposure and aggression. Comput. Hum. Behav. 70 407–415. 10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.029 DOI

Fisch S. M. (2004). Children’s Learning From Educational Television: Sesame Street and Beyond. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Foster E. M., Watkins S. (2010). The value of reanalysis: TV viewing and attention problems. Child Dev. 81 368–375. 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01400.x PubMed DOI

Friedrich L. K., Stein A. H. (1973). Aggressive and prosocial television programs and the natural behavior of preschool children. Monogr. Soc. Res. Child Dev. 38:63 10.2307/1165725 PubMed DOI

Fu K., Ho F. K. W., Rao N., Jiang F., Li S. L., Lee T. M. C., et al. (2017). Parental restriction reduces the harmful effects of in-bedroom electronic devices. Arch. Dis. Childh. 102 1125–1131. 10.1136/archdischild-2017-312639 PubMed DOI

Gilmore R. O., Adolph K. E. (2017). Video can make behavioural science more reproducible. Nat. Hum. Behav. 1:0128. 10.1038/s41562-017-0128 PubMed DOI PMC

Goedhart G., Kromhout H., Wiart J., Vermeulen R. (2015). Validating self-reported mobile phone use in adults using a newly developed smartphone application. Occupat. Environ. Med. 72 812–818. 10.1136/oemed-2015-102808 PubMed DOI

Goh S. N., Teh L. H., Tay W. R., Anantharaman S., van Dam R. M., Tan C. S., et al. (2016). Sociodemographic, home environment and parental influences on total and device-specific screen viewing in children aged 2 years and below: an observational study. BMJ Open 6 e009113. 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-009113 PubMed DOI PMC

Hiniker A., Patel S. N., Kohno T., Kientz J. A. (2016). “Why would you do that? predicting the uses and gratifications behind smartphone-usage behaviors,” in Paper presented at: the 2016 Proceedings of the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Heidelberg.

Jackson D. M., Djafarian K., Stewart J., Speakman J. R. (2009). Increased television viewing is associated with elevated body fatness but not with lower total energy expenditure in children. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 89 1031–1036. 10.3945/ajcn.2008.26746 PubMed DOI

Kirkorian H. L., Choi K., Anderson D. R. (2019). American parents’ active involvement mediates the impact of background television on young children’s toy play. J. Child. Media 13 377–394. 10.1080/17482798.2019.1635033 DOI

Kostyrka-Allchorne K., Cooper N. R., Simpson A. (2017). The relationship between television exposure and children’s cognition and behaviour: a systematic review. Dev. Rev. 44 19–58. 10.1016/j.dr.2016.12.002 DOI

Lapierre M. A., Piotrowski J. T., Linebarger D. L. (2012). Background television in the homes of US children. Pediatrics 130 839–846. 10.1542/peds.2011-2581 PubMed DOI

Lauricella A. R., Blackwell C. K., Wartella E. (2017). “The “New” technology environment: the role of content and context on learning and development from mobile media,” in The Effect of Content and Context on Learning and Development, eds Barr R., Linebarger D. N. (New York, NY: Springer; ), 1–24.

Linder J., Werner N. E. (2012). Relationally aggressive media exposure and children’s normative beliefs: does parental mediation matter? Fam. Relat. 61 488–500. 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00707.x DOI

Linebarger D., Barr R., Lapierre M., Piotrowski J. (2014). Parenting, media use, cumulative risk, and children’s executive functioning. J. Dev. Behav. Pediatr. 35 367–377. 10.1097/DBP.0000000000000069 PubMed DOI

Madigan S., Browne D., Racine N., Mori C., Tough S. (2019). Association between screen time and children’s performance on a developmental screening test. JAMA Pediatr. 173 244–250. 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.5056 PubMed DOI PMC

McDaniel B. T., Radesky J. S. (2018). Technoference: parent distraction with technology and associations with child behavior problems. Child Dev. 89 100–109. 10.1111/cdev.12822 PubMed DOI PMC

Nikken P., Schols M. (2015). How and Why Parents Guide the Media Use of Young Children. J. Child Fam. Stud. 24 3423–3435. 10.1007/s10826-015-0144-4 PubMed DOI PMC

Oakes L. M. (2010). Using habituation of looking time to assess mental processes in infancy. J. Cogn. Dev. 11 255–268. 10.1080/15248371003699977 PubMed DOI PMC

Oulasvirta A., Tamminen S., Roto V., Kuorelahti J. (2005). “Interaction in 4-second bursts: the fragmented nature of attentional resources in mobile HCI,” in Paper Presented at: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal.

Pempek T. A., Lauricella A. R. (2017). “The effects of parent-child interaction and media use on cognitive development in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers,” in Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts, eds Blumberg F. C., Brooks P. J. (Amsterdam: Elsevier Inc; ), 53–74. 10.1016/B978-0-12-809481-5.00003-1 DOI

Pempek T. A., McDaniel B. T. (2016). Young Children’s Tablet Use and Associations with Maternal Well-Being. J. Child Fam. Stud. 25 2636–2647. 10.1007/s10826-016-0413-x DOI

Pew Research Center (2019). Smartphone Ownership Is Growing Rapidly Around the World, but Not Always Equally. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

Piotrowski J. T. (2017). “The parental media mediation context of young children’s media use,” in Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood: The Effect of Content and Context on Learning and Development, eds Barr R., Linebarger D. (New York, NY: Springer; ), 205–220.

Przybylski A. K., Weinstein N. (2017). Digital screen time limits and young children’s psychological well-being: evidence from a population-based study. Child Dev. 90 e56–e65. 10.1111/cdev.13007 PubMed DOI

R Core Team (2013). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.

Radesky J. S., Kistin C., Eisenberg S., Gross J., Block G., Zuckerman B., et al. (2016). Parent perspectives on their mobile technology use: the excitement and exhaustion of parenting while connected. J. Dev. Behav. Pediatr. 37 694–701. 10.1097/dbp.0000000000000357 PubMed DOI

Radesky J. S., Kistin C. J., Zuckerman B., Nitzberg K., Gross J., Kaplan-Sanoff M., et al. (2014). Patterns of mobile device use by caregivers and children during meals in fast-food restaurants. Pediatrics 133 843–849. PubMed

Radesky J. S., Miller A. L., Rosenblum K. L., Appugliese D., Kaciroti N., Lumeng J. C. (2015a). Maternal mobile device use during a structured parent–child interaction task. Acad. Pediatr. 15 238–244. 10.1016/j.acap.2014.10.001 PubMed DOI PMC

Radesky J. S., Schumacher J., Zuckerman B. (2015b). Mobile and interactive media use by young children: the good, the bad, and the unknown. Pediatrics 135 1–3. 10.1542/peds.2014-2251 PubMed DOI

Radesky J., Weeks H., Ball R., Schaller A., Yeo S., Durnez J., et al. (2020). Mobile device sampling: an unobtrusive, objective measure of child smartphone and tablet use. Pediatrics 146:e2019351

Rasmussen E. E., Shafer A., Colwell M. J., White S., Punyanunt-Carter N., Densley R. L., et al. (2016). Relation between active mediation, exposure to Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood, and US preschoolers’ social and emotional development. J. Child. Media 10 443–461.

Reed J., Hirsh-Pasek K., Golinkoff R. (2017). Learning on hold: cell phones sidetrack parent-child interactions. Dev. Psychol. 53 1428–1436. 10.1037/dev0000292 PubMed DOI

Rich M., Bickham D. S., Shrier L. A. (2015). Measuring youth media exposure: a multimodal method for investigating the influence of media on digital natives. Am. Behav. Sci. 59 1736–1754. 10.1177/0002764215596558 DOI

Rideout V. (2017). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media.

Sadeh A. (2004). A brief screening questionnaire for infant sleep problems: validation and findings for an internet sample. Pediatrics 113 e570–e577. 10.1542/peds.113.6.e570 PubMed DOI

St.Peters M., Fitch M., Huston A. C., Wright J. C., Eakins D. J. (1991). Television and families: what do young children watch with their parents? Child Dev. 62 1409–1423. 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1991.tb01614.x PubMed DOI

Troseth G. L., Russo C. E., Strouse G. A. (2016). What’s next for research on young children’s interactive media? J. Child. Media 10 54–62. 10.1080/17482798.2015.1123166 DOI

Valkenburg P. M., Krcmar M., Peeters A. L., Marseille N. (1999). Developing a scale to assess three styles of television mediation: “Instructive mediation”, “restrictive mediation”, and “social coviewing”. J. Broadcast. Electr. Media 43 52–66. 10.1080/08838159909364474 DOI

Valkenburg P. M., Peter J. (2013). The differential susceptibility to media effects model. J. Commun. 63 221–243. 10.1111/jcom.12024 DOI

Vandewater E. A., Lee S. J. (2009). Measuring Children’s media use in the digital age: issues and challenges. Am. Behav. Sci. 52 1152–1176. 10.1177/0002764209331539 PubMed DOI PMC

Vygotsky L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wartella E., Rideout V., Lauricella A., Connell S. (2014). Revised Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology: A National Survey. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University.

Wright J. C., Huston A. C., Murphy K. C., St. Peters M., Piñon M., Scantlin R., et al. (2001). The relations of early television viewing to school readiness and vocabulary of children from low-income families: the Early Window Project. Child Dev. 72 1347–1366. 10.1111/1467-8624.t01-1-00352 PubMed DOI

Yip S. (2003). Synergistic science. Nat. Matter 2 3–5. 10.1038/nmat778 PubMed DOI

Zack E., Barr R. (2016). The role of interactional quality in learning from touch screens during infancy: context matters. Front. Psychol. 7:1264. 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01264 PubMed DOI PMC

Zimmerman F. J., Christakis D., Meltzoff A. N. (2007). Associations between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age 2 Years. The Journal of Pediatrics 151 364–368. 10.1016/j.jpeds.2007.04.071 PubMed DOI

Zimmerman F. J., Christakis D. A. (2007). Associations between content types of early media exposure and subsequent attentional problems. Pediatrics 120 986–992. 10.1542/peds.2006-3322 PubMed DOI

Socio-demographic and other factors contributing to excessive leisure screen time in preadolescent children

Parental views on their children's smartphone use during personal and relational activities