Risk of digital exposure for children's comprehension and integration of multiple digital documents

Abstract Background Children nowadays have to read and understand multiple digital documents while living in the current digital society. We examined the relation between digital exposure and multiple digital document reading outcomes in 203 5th graders (age, M = 10.33 years). Methods At the beginning of 5th grade, we assessed their working memory, sustained attention, decoding, vocabulary and digital exposure. At the end of 5th grade, children performed an online reading task, reading four digital hypermedia texts on dairy consumption. They then wrote advice on providing dairy to children in primary school and answered multiple‐choice questions on each of the texts. The number of unique pages that were visited was recorded. Results For text comprehension (multiple choice questions), social media use was a negative predictor over and above positive predictions of decoding efficiency and vocabulary. Furthermore, navigation (i.e., unique pages visited) was a unique predictor and also a partial mediator for the relation between decoding and comprehension. For text integration (essays), decoding and vocabulary were again significant predictors. Here, a negative direct effect of gaming emerged when navigation was added as a mediator, after which only decoding remained to have an additional indirect effect, next to the direct effect of navigation. Children with dyslexia ( n = 13), ADHD ( n = 6) or ASS ( n = 2) seemed to have additional challenges in digital reading: children with dyslexia visited fewer unique pages, resulting in lower comprehension and integration. Furthermore, children with ADHD showed high levels of social media use and gaming which are associated respectively with lower text comprehension and integration. Conclusions Social media use and gaming are negatively associated with digital reading outcomes. Digital exposure may be an additional risk factor in digital reading for children with ADHD, while children with dyslexia face additional problems in navigation behaviour.