Collaborative Research: Socioeconomic Inequalities in Technology Use and Health Lifestyles among Children and Youth.

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project will analyze the use of technologies by children and teenagers in the mobile internet era. The focus is how technology use is situated within the interaction of children's lives and families, and how social class plays into these processes. With technologies changing rapidly, research on young people's technology use have lagged. The study will contribute to knowledge in several areas. First, the project will provide new information about the type, frequency, and context of technology use among children and youth. Second, investigators will build upon the emerging body of evidence and theory on children's health lifestyles by integrating technology use as a health behavior. Third, investigators will consider children's and parents' negotiations, practices, and emerging understandings around technology use. Understanding children's technology use as it relates to other behavior is important for improving the longer-term development, health, and well-being of children. This is particularly important for marginalized populations--racial/ethnic minorities, children of immigrants, and children living in poverty. Student training is central to the project, with students heavily involved in analysis, dissemination of findings, theoretical development, and integration of quantitative and qualitative results. Relatively little is known about children's technology use in the mobile technology era or about how current patterns of technology use relate to other aspects of health lifestyles, such as physical activity or socializing with peers, in early life. This project will address three research questions. First, how does social class currently shape children's technology use and its role in their health lifestyles? Second, how does social class influence parents' perceptions of emerging technologies and their strategies for structuring and negotiating children's access to and use of these technologies? Third, do family negotiations and practices around technology use help to explain socioeconomic variation in children's technology use? This project will draw on two new data sources to provide breadth and depth in understanding the relationship between social class and contemporary children's technology use and processes underlying it. The 2014 Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics collected survey and time diary data from a US-representative sample ages 0-17. The 2016 Children's Health Lifestyles study provides multimethod qualitative data on families with elementary-aged children. The observational data permit a fuller understanding of the social settings of technology use, and interview and focus groups illuminate perceptions of and negotiations around it.