The Ecological Context of Preschool-Aged Children's Selection of Media Content

Today, preschool-aged children have an abundance of digital content to choose from, with some more desirable than others from a developmental perspective. We aim to describe and better understand the interplay of factors that influence children’s selection of media content using a year-long, multi-case ethnography of 13 diverse families in Southern California. We found that young children’s media content selection may be best understood as an ecologically situated process involving the interplay between the content, the child, their family, community, and societal spheres. Children do not make media selections on their own. Rather, these choices are supported or constrained by a range of resource, culture, and policy factors specific to family and community background. We argue that policy makers and technology designers are better served by an ecological perspective if they wish to understand how digital content is selected and used by children in sociocultural context.