Engl. transl.: The toddlers with the smart devices: Children's access and parents' attitudes

The need has grown for research on the media use of the youngest children with the ever increasing role of internet connected devices in the daily lives of people during the last years. Smartphones and tablets have become common and the tablets are preferred by little fingers. The aim of this study was to provide an overview of the media use of 0-to-8-year-olds in Iceland and their parents’ attitudes towards the use and various aspects of it. A stratified, random sample of 2000 children in this age span from the whole country was the basis for the study. E mail addresses were found for parents of 1448 children and they were contacted with an introductory letter and a request to fill in a web questionnaire based on the Swedish Media Council’s questionnaire used since 2010 (Statistics Sweden, 2015). The response rate of those who received the questionnaire was 59.4%, with 860 valid responses. The results suggest that the likelihood of ownership of different devices for media use is higher from the age of 5. This is evident in the case of smartphones and tablets, as a quarter of 5-8y have their own smartphone and/or a tablet. In the age group 2-4y, 10% have their own tablet but 62% share such a device with others in the family, and 56% of 0-1y share a tablet with others in their family. The tablet is most often used for listening to music and watching videos and films. In the age group 0-1y, one third uses the tablet at some point. In the age group 2-4y, this percentage is 71%, and 92% in the age group 5-8y. The most popular activity is watching a movie or a TV show, as over 90% of 2-8y do that at some point, and 62% of 0-1y. Three quarters of the youngest children (0-1y) never use the internet but 4% in this age group use it daily. A small percentage of the children are heavy users according to the definition of the Swedish Media Council of using a medium for three hours or more daily. Two percent of 5-8y play computer games for three or more hours daily and 2% of 2-4y use the internet for three or more hours daily. The children’s parents quite often stay with the children when they use different media. The parents’ presence seems to decrease with age as parents of 60% of the children in the youngest age group (0-1y) are present when their children watch TV shows or films, while the corresponding percentage for 2-4y is 48% and for 5-8y 28%. Watching TV/films is a popular media use for children 5-8y and parents’ rules on this are not as strict as for other media use. Some parents have no rules on media use but a large majority believes that parents are responsible for protecting children regarding media use. The results of this study are quite similar to those from Sweden (Swedish Media Council). The conclusion strengthens results from previous studies on the importance of parents and children being together using media and that parents seem to accept their important role regarding their children’s media use.

-After reaching the age of five, the likelihood of owning a smart device increases -There is a significant difference between genders when it comes to playing video games on a tablet or a comptuer. (Boys spend more time playing video games) -2% of children at the age of 5-8 spend more than 3 hours playing video games every day. -90% of children at the age of 2-8 watch TV shows or movies - 92% Children ( ages 5-8) use a computer or a smart tablet to some extent. Most commonly to watch videos/TV-shows or listen to music. -60% of the parents are present when their child (ages 0-1) are watching a TV show or a movie. -Majority of the parents think that contents of movies, TV shows or video games can be harmful. -Parents mention porn, violence and horror films as the most common harmful content. -81,5% though that their child had not been in contact with anything harmful online. -70% think the community does an "ok job" or a bad job at protecting children from harmful contents online. (translated by the coder)