Screen-Time "Friends"

Child watching Doc McStuffins.

Source: Pixabay

My students are often surprised when they interact with young children after taking my course. Teachers College, Columbia University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who hails from Turkey, commented that when she "visited my aunt in summer, I asked my 4-year-old young cousin who was his best friend. He told me his best friend is Spider-Man and Deniz! This is not a surprising answer from a preschool child whose daily life is extensively immersed in media." Apparently, I have trained my students well to see psychological phenomena in young viewing minds as media is more social than assumed.

Thanks to the convergence culture (Jenkins, 2001), children don't see media characters in a single medium. They are exposed to characters in many contexts — apps, school, festivals, theme parks, branded toys, websites, etc. Rideout, et al., (2003) reports that children younger than 6 use media about two hours per day and start watching screens younger than the recommended age (1.5 to 2 years is an excellent time to start). Almost all children (97 percent) were using products such as toys that were branded with media characters. The authors concluded that children's lives are embedded into the media world.

Children potentially develop attachments to characters, relate to them, and interact as if they were acquaintances in real-life (Bond & Calvert, 2014). Established as a term first by Horton & Wohl in 1956, (Giles, 2010) "parasocial relationships" (Hoffner, 2008) are those that are emotionally one-sided (Bond & Calvert, 2014). Parasocial relationships are affected by various factors.

According to Bond and Calvert's 2014 findings, "character personification, attachment, and social realism" are significant pillars. For instance, to build a meaningful relationship with media characters in toddlers and understand the implications for learning math, Calvert et al. (2013) manipulated the familiarity of a character — 18-, 19.5-, and 21-month-old toddlers with unfamiliar toys were introduced to toys in a familiar condition. The familiarized group was better at mathematical skills and seriation tasks. Thus, it seems that parasocial relationship with the media characters contributed to learning.

Hoffner (2008) suggests that parents and educational programmers should use parasocial relationships as an aid to children's learning. Richert et al. (2011) states that children's shows like Blue's Clues and Dora utilize social aspects with "interactive" characters who make eye contact by talking to the child. These efforts to build parasocial relationships were made with the hope to support children's learning from these educational "relationships."

According to Bandura's social-cognitive theory (2002), we learn by observing and modeling others. Bandura emphasizes the social nature of learning and asserts that media influences behavior through vicarious learning. Observing the media characters and how they are "punished" and "rewarded" changes what was previously known by the child. Learning is social in its nature with exchanges, processing, and reenacting (Richert et al., 2011).

It seems that children can learn and feel "friendship" from characters. Research on educational television has shown that children can learn math, language, and other curricula during screen time. Evans & Anderson (2007) emphasize the importance of content which shows positive overall learning outcomes for children. Thus, keep in mind the benefits of the message in the medium (program or show). As a caregiver, choose content relevant to potential emotional attachments as children may feel they become "friends" with who they see onscreen.

In sum, children are learning from those "friends" they see onscreen. Something to think about the next time they are streaming their favorite program afterschool.

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The author would like to acknowledge Teachers College Graduate Student, Rumeysa Ozturk for her collaboration in researching and providing information regarding parasocial relationships, media friends, and their applications.