The Effect of Dual-Income Household Status on Media Device Addiction through Children’s Self-Care Time

The current study focused on the relationship between dual-income household status and media device addiction, and the mediating role of children’s self-care time (children’s time spent on their own without adult supervision or care). A total of 1,190 cases derived from 13th wave of Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) were used in the analysis; for statistical analytic strategies, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling were conducted. In terms of testing the significance of indirect effect, bootstrapping method was used. Key findings are as follows. First, the dual-income household status did not have statistically significant direct effect on media device addiction. Second, the indirect effect of dual-income household status on media device addiction via children’s self-care time was statistically significant. This indicates that children from dual-income household experienced longer self-care time, which in turn increased the level of media device addiction. Based on aforementioned findings, this study suggested child care services to reduce self-care time, which could, in turn decrease the possibility of media device addiction; and the implications such as child care services and policies especially for children from dual-income households were also discussed. The current study was concluded with study limitations and suggestions for future research.