“Nonsense screen days” and children’s agency: Understanding preschoolers’ screen media experiences in Singapore

As digital device use rises among young children, there is growing research and discourse about “screen time” and its potential effects. Despite this growth, there is substantial disagreement between scholars about the developmental impact of screen media use. One reason behind this is that “screen time” is a problematic construct, with limited studies providing a detailed and empirically grounded understanding of what “screen time” actually entails. Through semi-structured interviews and home observations with 95 parent–child dyads in Singapore, we sought to explore what “screen time” actually entails. Through our data, we propose an alternative term we call screen media experiences, which aims to capture developmentally relevant attributes of screen device use among preschoolers aged between four and six. Findings suggest that preschoolers’ screen media experiences are characterized by six dimensions: parental motivations, content dimensions, features, social interaction, agency, and spatio-temporal context. We argue that characterizing screen device use as screen media experiences provides greater clarity for future research and discourse surrounding young children’s media use. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.