Technology/ media use in early childhood in Australia

Overview

Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.

Young children are using increasing more technology and media from a very young age. The Australian government recommends the limitation of Screen Time for young children, which includes TV, computers, and video games. The recommendations are no Screen Time for children under two years and less than one hour per day for children under six years. Research conducted in America has shown that the Screen Time of young children today by far exceeds these recommended limits.

This research project aims to describe the technology/media use of young children and investigate the effects on health, development, and learning of exceeding these recommendations. This project makes use of the public data set collected during the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, which is an ongoing project of the Australian government.

Projects on this topic can include one or more of these aims:

  • Analyse and describe technology/media use by young children in Australia.
  • Investigate changing trends in technology/media use over time.
  • Investigate predictive demographics for increased technology/media use of young children.
  • Investigate positive/negative effects of technology/media use by young children on their health, development, and learning.

Students working on this project will:

  • Review the literature on technology/media use of young children
  • Determine a suitable research focus for examining the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) data set
  • Conduct statistical analysis of the LSAC data set using SPSS
  • Compare findings to government recommendations and other standards/hypotheses

References

  1. Growing Up in Australia: the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children: 2009-10 Annual Report, February 2011.
  2. Vandewater, E., Rideout, V.J., Wartella, E.A., Huang, X., Lee, J.H., and Shim, M. (2007) Digital Childhood: Electronic Media and Technology Use Among Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. Pediatrics, 119, pp. 1006-1015.
Study level
Honours
Supervisors
QUT
Organisational unit

Science and Engineering Faculty

Research area

Computer Science

Contact

Please contact the supervisor.