Mobile media use and preschoolers' peer interaction skills

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded Baylor University $519,501 under project grant R15HD122735 on September 2, 2026, to conduct a longitudinal study examining the relationship between preschoolers' mobile media use and peer interaction skill development. This award is funded under the Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research program (CFDA 93.865).

The study addresses documented declines in social skills among preschool-aged children (3 to 5 years old) over the past decade, correlating with a 180 percent increase in mobile media use since the COVID-19 pandemic. The research will examine how time spent on tablets and smartphones displaces critical peer and caregiver interaction opportunities essential for social development. The study aims to profile preschoolers' mobile media consumption by time and content type, test whether these profiles predict peer interaction skills, and assess whether parental mobile media use during shared parent-child time contributes to outcomes.

The research design employs multi-informant, multi-assessment longitudinal methodology. Parents of preschool children will complete a baseline online survey and provide continuous tracking data across 10 consecutive days through passive sensing via an installed app, daily device screenshots, and parental time-use logs. The work is performed in Waco, Texas, with a period of performance from September 2, 2026, through August 31, 2029. The assistance type is a project grant.

Abstract

Social skills of preschool-aged children (3 to 5 years old) have shown a notable decline over the last decade, resulting in increased social anxiety and depressive symptoms, and weaker relationships. Likely contributing to this decline is the increase in mobile media use (i.e., tablets and smartphones), which has risen 180% since the covid-19 pandemic. These rates raise concern, as time spent on mobile media displaces critical opportunities for social interaction with parents, caregivers, and peers - activities known to foster social skill development. The goal of this proposed study is to examine how preschoolers' mobile media use relates to the development of peer interaction skills. Additionally, IT will identify whether these associations vary in relation to the type of content children engage with, and whether parents' use of mobile media during shared time contributes to these outcomes. The study aims include 1) examining how preschoolers' mobile media time predicts their peer interaction skills; 2) identifying profiles of preschoolers' mobile media use using measures of time and content, to test if these profiles predict peer interaction skills, and to test if the profiles moderate the association between child mobile media use and peer interaction skills; and 3) examining how parents' mobile media use during parent-child time predicts preschoolers' peer interaction skills. To address these aims, a multi-informant, multi-assessment, longitudinal study will be conducted. Parents of preschool children (3 to 5 years old) will complete an online baseline survey and provide data on children's mobile media use across 10 consecutive days, including: 1) passive sensing (via an APP installed on their device or devices) to continuously track who is using a device and for how long; 2) daily screenshots of parents' and children's primary device use for the previous 24 hours; and 3) parents' time diaries to indicate when they are around their child. Preschoolers' peer interaction skills will be captured through observation and teacher reports across multiple preschool settings in the central texas area on five different days. Follow-up surveys and classroom observation will proceed three months after baseline. Multilevel models will examine how children's mobile media use, and parents' mobile media use in the presence of their child, predicts child peer interaction skills. Using a weighted system based on time spent on the application and the application content (i.e., socially interactive, educational, violent, and prosocial measured using a validated codebook), different profiles of child mobile media users will be determined in a latent profile analysis, which will be used as moderators of the association between children's mobile media use and their peer interaction skills. The research team brings expertise in child development, family science, human-computer interaction, and media measurement, supported by graduate and undergraduate students. Results from this project will provide essential data to inform and advance policies to support preschoolers' short- and long-term social well-being.