The Impact of Media Device Addiction on Pragmatic Language Skills in School-Aged Children: The Mediating Role of Executive Function Difficulty

Objectives: Pragmatic language skills, the ability to use language appropriately in social contexts, remain a uniquely human characteristic that artificial intelligence has yet to fully replicate. The relative importance of this ability is expected to grow even more in the future. Against this backdrop, it is crucially important to identify the factors that influence the development of pragmatic language skills and to explore their mechanisms. This study aims to investigate how media device addiction affects school-aged children’s pragmatic language skills. It also examines whether executive functioning difficulty mediates the relationship between media device addiction and pragmatic language skills. Methods: The participants in the study included 1,392 third-grade elementary school children. Using data from the 10th (2017) Panel Study on Korean Children, the relationship between children’s media device addiction, executive function difficulty, and pragmatic language skills was examined. Results: A significant correlation was found among children’s media device addiction, executive function difficulty, and pragmatic language skills. Moreover, media device addiction was a significant predictor of pragmatic language skills, and the partial mediating effect of executive function difficulty was confirmed in this relationship. Conclusion: These results suggest that when media device addiction has a negative impact on the development of children’s pragmatic language skills, executive function difficulty plays a partial mediating role. Therefore, it is necessary to take both pragmatic language skills and executive function difficulty into consideration in order to minimize the negative effect of media device addiction on school-aged children’s language development.