No longer the simple concept of “screen time,” digital media must be considered within the big picture of physical and social spaces that children occupy. Digital ecosystems, which include design patterns that encourage endless scrolls and highly monetized patterns of advertisements and commercialization that are thinly veiled, have an outsized impact on children’s development and yet have received considerably less attention than individual behavioral approaches in digital media research. Part 1 of this series on digital media examines how the ecosystems that shape children and family well-being should be transformed so all children can thrive in both physical and digital spaces.
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Digital ecosystems have an outsized impact on children’s development and yet have received considerably less attention than individual behavioral approaches in digital media research (such as a child’s “screen time”). The digital ecosystem includes the digital design patterns that influence children’s media habits by funneling children toward endless scrolls, feeds, and nudges to keep watching. It includes the highly monetized patterns of advertisements and commercialization that are thinly veiled in popular content platforms. It includes the erosion of digital privacy with companies and third parties collecting personal information in covert and overt ways.
Part 1 of this series on digital media is an important addition to the literature because it includes studies of how digital design increases children’s risks from media, and how digital media use interacts with larger systemic structures and cultural forces at hand. This important review builds an evidence base justifying the reduction of commercialized content that is so popular in platforms.
