An estimated 12% of first graders' most-used media at home is educational, a new study suggests.
Results also showed that higher use of educational media was associated with both more time spent reading and less overall time in front of a screen - a signal that educational video, app and game use is not replacing reading.
A clearer picture of first graders' TV or tablet time and factors related to their use of educational media may reveal opportunities for fitting more screen-based learning into their day, researchers say.
"We think it's really important to understand because there is a lot of evidence that children can learn from high-quality educational media, and that using educational media can be more supportive of development and learning than using high levels of entertainment content," said lead author Rebecca Dore, director of research at The Ohio State University's Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy.
"Kids are using, on average, 2 1/2 hours of media a day. And if we are seeing difficulties or disparities in some of these skills and knowledge that children are developing at this age, can we use educational media as a sort of prompt, or support, for those areas?"
The study was published recently in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.
Data for this paper came from reports by parents and caregivers participating in a larger study following children from preschool or kindergarten to fourth grade in central Ohio.
The 346 caregivers completed a questionnaire in the spring of a child's first grade school year, reporting on up to three to five TV shows, videos, apps or games the child used the most. The research team then used a systematic coding system to categorize the content as educational or entertainment.
Researchers characterized the overall amount of educational content as a "small but potentially meaningful portion of children's media use in this age range." Dore noted that the range of educational themes varied quite a bit: "Some kids were getting 0% from their most-used content and for some kids, 100% of their most-used content was educational."
Overall, more apps and games were used for educational purposes than video and TV, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) topics dominated the content coded as educational.
Socioeconomic status did not affect educational media use, "suggesting that there is somewhat equitable access across socioeconomic status, which I think is really important," Dore said.
Although the published study did not examine media outlets, Dore said that follow-up analysis showed that PBS was the provider of 45.2% of the educational TV and video content commonly used by first graders.
"The objective of those programs is being able to provide free, high-quality public media access to families," she said. "When educational content is integrated into the plot of a program, children are having to learn the educational content to be able to follow the storyline. That's the kind of content that PBS tends to produce, which is better than more didactic programming, like: 'OK, kids, now we're going to do this lesson.'"
Results showed that girls used more educational media than boys, perhaps a reflection of other research suggesting that girls lean toward relationship-focused content that might be more common in educational media, and boys tend to favor more action-oriented content.
Finding that educational media use does not crowd out reading time or extend overall screen time could help ease the minds of parents who might worry about a recommendation that their children tune into more digital educational content.
There's no established ideal amount of educational media use among first graders, Dore said - the sweet spot depends on the child, the home environment, and lots of other factors.
"We need to know what's out there and what children are actually using of what's available to understand how to better diversify the content for children and make sure it's being used by the children who need it most," she said. "We're all worried about what enriching activities that children might not be engaging in because they're spending so much time using screens. So let's increase the quality of the screen time they're getting."
This work was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences.
Co-authors were Kelly Purtell, Tzu-Jung Lin and Laura Justice, all of Ohio State.
