Child distress and mobile apps during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
The COVID-19 pandemic was labeled a pandemic in March 2020 (WHO, 2020) and led to many changes for children in the United States, including more time at home and more time on screens (Drouin et al., 2020). Media use in general, and the COVID-19-associated increase in media use, has been correlated with changes in mental health (increased anxiety, etc.) in children, adolescents, and parents (Drouin et al., 2020). Children and adolescents utilize a variety of different applications/”apps” on a variety of media devices. These apps label themselves in many different ways, such as being “educational” or for “mindfulness”; however, many of these apps lack evidence to support their proposed content (Butterfield et al. 2020; Cerniglia & Cimino. 2020). The present study will examine if there are differences in reported child distress between children using different types of apps (i.e., educational, streaming, gaming) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we plan to examine if time spent on apps differs by child age (controlling for family income in all analyses). Our sample includes 365 parents of children between ages 1 -13 years (M = 5.65, SD = 2.41), 86.8 % non-Hispanic and White, living primarily in the Twin Cities, MN. Learning how different types of apps associate with the wellbeing of children during COVID-19 will help inform targeted media-use interventions and app development. It could also inform recommendations for parents and teachers when deciding the type of apps that will be best for the wellbeing of their children and/or students