The power of parent attitudes: Examination of parent attitudes toward traditional and emerging technology

Mobile technology devices continue to develop and change, creating increased opportunity for use by children. However, parents remain wary of screen time and question the benefits of using these devices for teaching specific content (e.g., science, technology, engineering, and math-STEM). Parent attitudes can play a very powerful role in children's media use and these attitudes may be even more impactful with emerging or novel technologies. As such, this study used a nationally representative sample of US parents to further document what child, parent, and family-level variables predict preschool children's mobile media device use with a particular focus on parent attitudes. Additionally, this study is the first to examine parent attitudes toward the emerging technological feature of haptic technology as an additional medium for teaching young children STEM content. Results demonstrate that parent technology attitudes, their own mobile media use, and certain family-level variables are related to general child mobile media use as well as science and math media use. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research and future work on haptic technology use for young children.