Media Use, Face-to-Face Communication, Media Multitasking, and Social
Well-Being Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Girls
Roy Pea, Clifford Nass, Lyn Meheula, Marcus Rance, Aman Kumar, Holden Bamford, Matthew Nass,
Aneesh Simha, Benjamin Stillerman, Steven Yang, and Michael Zhou
Stanford University
An online survey of 3,461 North American girls ages 8 –12 conducted in the summer of 2010 through
Discovery Girls magazine examined the relationships between social well-being and young girls’ media use—including video, video games, music listening, reading/homework, e-mailing/posting on social media sites, texting/instant messaging, and talking on phones/video chatting—and face-to-face communication.
This study introduced both a more granular measure of media multitasking and a new comparative measure of media use versus time spent in face-to-face communication. Regression analyses indicated that negative social well-being was positively associated with levels of uses of media that are centrally about interpersonal interaction (e.g., phone, online communication) as well as uses of media that are not (e.g., video, music, and reading). Video use was particularly strongly associated with negative social well-being indicators. Media multitasking was also associated with negative social indicators.
Conversely, face-to-face communication was strongly associated with positive social well-being. Cell phone ownership and having a television or computer in one’s room had little direct association with children’s socioemotional well-being. We hypothesize possible causes for these relationships, call for research designs to address causality, and outline possible implications of such findings for the social well-being of younger adolescents.
Keywords: late childhood, social well-being, media, multitasking, computers
Extensive research has addressed social developmental processes and outcomes and the many effects of media use (primarily
TV) on cognitive development (e.g., Calvert & Wilson, 2008;
Parke & Clarke-Stewart, 2010; Pecora, Murray, & Wartella, 2007).
Yet the intersections of social well-being and media use patterns in the current era of multiscreen media multitasking (with TVs, computers, and mobile devices) have not been examined. Another key omission has been the failure to assess time spent in face-toface communication in studies of the relationships of media use on social development. This oversight is important given the shift from face-to-face communication to mediated interpersonal communication, even among children (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts,
2010).
This study examined this important set of relationships in a large-scale survey on traditional and new media use and face-toface communication and social well-being indices in girls 8 to 12 years old. Specifically, we addressed the relationships between these girls’ media use, face-to-face communication, and media multitasking and their overall social success, feelings of acceptance and normalcy among friends, and relative dominance of in-person/online friends as sources of positive and negative social feelings.
Growing Up Digital
In a national sample of over 2,000 8- to 18-year olds, the Kaiser
Family Foundation (Rideout et al., 2010) found that the average total time that children reported experiencing media in “TV, Music/audio,
Computer, Video games, Print, and Movies” rose to 10
hr 45 min (treating simultaneous media use as distinct activities) per day in 2009, up from 8 hr 33 min in 2004 and 7 hr 29 min in
1999—a 44% increase over a decade. These figures do not include reported hours spent texting, phoning, or using computers forschoolwork. Perhaps most remarkable is that the reported proportionof time spent multitasking—the proportion of media time spent using more than one medium concurrently—increased from 16% in 1999 to 26% in 2004 to 29% in 2009.
Apart from the increase in overall time spent consuming media is the finding that youth consume 20% of their media on a “third screen” (other than TV and computer): mobile smartphones and game consoles (Rideout et al., 2010). The Pew Internet & American
Life Project (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell, & Purcell, 2010) reported that 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds owned cell phones, with
87% of them texting and half of the texters (over one third of all 12- to 17-year-olds) sending 50 texts daily. Studying 8- to
This article was published Online First January 23, 2012.
Roy Pea, School of Education, Stanford University; Clifford Nass, Lyn
Meheula, Marcus Rance, Aman Kumar, Holden Bamford, Matthew Nass,
Aneesh Simha, Benjamin Stillerman, Steven Yang, and Michael Zhou,
Department of Communication, Stanford University.
We gratefully acknowledge grant support from the National Science
Foundation (NSF) for this work, including support of the LIFE Center
(NSF-0835854) and of an associated media multitasking and youth development
workshop (NSF-0841556).
Our special thanks go to Discovery Girls Magazine and its editor
Catherine Lee for providing data access for this study.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Roy Pea,
Stanford University School of Education, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA
94305. E-mail: [email protected]
Developmental Psychology © 2012 American Psychological Association
2012, Vol. 48, No. 2, 327–336 0012-1649/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027030
32718-year-olds, Rideout et al. (2010) found that 66% of children
owned their own cell phones and 76% owned their own iPod/
music players. Fifty-eight percent of 12-year-olds now own a
cellphone (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010), up from
18% in 2004. Teens also increasingly use social network sites: A
growing number (73%) of online 8- to 18-year-olds use social
network sites (Lenhart, Purcell, et al., 2010) for an average of 37
min per day (Rideout et al., 2010). Given this rapidly changing
media ecology for the interactions that shape social development,
it is vital to conduct empirical inquiries to understand how this new
digital climate is being taken up by and is influencing youth.
Considerable interest has also developed in media multitasking
(Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005). This interest has been spurred
by popular media attention and by the demonstration that heavy
chronic media multitaskers (college students) performed much
more poorly than light media multitaskers in three key aspects of
cognitive functioning: filtering, working memory management,
and task switching (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009).
Despite these findings on adult cognitive differences as a function
of chronic media multitasking, no research has yet examined
media multitasking by youth and its relationship to social wellbeing.
Parents express concerns about high media use by their
children and children’s friends and its likely developmental consequences
(Wallis, 2010), and Rideout et al. (2010, p. 13) found
that those 8- to 18-year-olds who spent more time with media
reported being less content (as measured by an index composed of
questions on having lots of friends, getting along well with parents,
being happy at school, not being bored, not feeling sad and
unhappy, and not getting in trouble a lot). On the other hand, cell
phones and other multitasking facilitators are also experienced by
youth as contributing to the developmental task of individuation
from parents (Lenhart, Ling, et al., 2010). Research has also
indicated that intimacy (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008),
identity (Huffaker & Calvert, 2005; Manago, Graham, Greenfield,
& Salimkhan, 2008; Valkenburg, Schouten, & Peter, 2005), developing
existing friendships (Bessie`re, Kiesler, Kraut, & Boneva,
2008; Gross, 2004; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007), and other developmental
tasks are played out online, so one may expect media use
to potentially relate to the developmental challenges of growing
intimacy with friends and other aspects of social well-being.
Although children are increasing their consumption of media
and their media multitasking, face-to-face communication remains
vital. While media are acknowledged central players in childhood
socialization (Ito et al., 2010; Livingstone, 2009), face-to-face
communication with peers and adults continues to be recognized
as a key determinant of social and emotional development (Denzin,
2010; Rogoff, 2003). Hence, it is significant that no previous
study has included measures of time spent on face-to-face communication
together with the use of mass and interpersonal new
media, particularly given this confluence of social developmental
issues.
Our study encompasses late childhood (ages 8 –9) and young
adolescence (ages 10 –12). Eight- to twelve-year-olds must deal
with developmental challenges including growing intimacy with
friends, exposure to risky behaviors among peers, increasing individuation
from family, greater responsibilities and assumed autonomy
in schoolwork and home life, and the approach of puberty.
These years comprise a pivotal time devoted to identity formation,
the development of social networks with friends who can serve as
models and peers for mutual support, and learning to effectively
navigate the social world. Masten et al.’s (1995) longitudinal study
of 191 children used structural equation modeling to determine
that peer social success is one of three major dimensions of
competence in late childhood (ages 8 –12). Increasingly outside the
bounds of the family with their peers (Larson & Richards, 1991),
young adolescents are becoming more aware of how they think
about themselves and how others are thinking about them (Harter,
1999) while also learning to express and read emotions and interpret
other signals that provide social feedback from their actual or
potential friends (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington,
2006). They participate in conversations with new personal
sources about what is right and wrong and about models to aspire
to, they receive feedback on their own actions and values, and they
experience self-validating mirroring that contributes to their identity
development.
The developmental challenge of intimacy is to acquire the
competencies for developing and maintaining close and meaningful
personal relationships. As Hartup (1996) observed, “having
friends” is a proxy for “being socially skilled”— because making
and keeping friends is an ongoing task with many detractions and
distractions. Furthermore, intimacy is formed, developed, and sustained
through mutual social exchanges with responsive others and
includes feeling accepted and understood (Buhrmester & Furman,
1987; Reis & Shaver, 1988). Buhrmester (1996) observed that
high-quality friendship is characterized by high levels of positive
features such as prosocial behaviors like support and intimacy and
low levels of negative features such as conflicts and rivalry, with
friendship quality affecting self-esteem, social adjustment, and
academic development. Demaray and Malecki (2002) found significant
positive relationships for adolescents between social support
from their friends, parents, classmates, and teachers and a
variety of positive indicators including social skills, academic
competence, leadership, and adaptive skills. Significant negative
relationships were found between social support and a variety of
negative indicators such as conduct problems, aggression, hyperactivity,
anxiety, depression, and withdrawal. Berndt (2002) reviewed
evidence that mutual self-disclosure is an important predictor
of intimacy and quality in adolescent friendships. In short,
feeling that one has close friends, finding it easy to make and keep
friends, feeling important to friends, feeling accepted and understood,
and feeling supported are all indicators of social success and
the development of intimacy.
On a related dimension, social competence in late childhood is
also associated with feelings of acceptance rather than rejection
and of normalcy among peers (e.g., Asher & Coie, 1990). Peer
acceptance is believed to promote the development of high-quality
friendships, whereas peer rejection leads to challenges in establishing
them (Nangle, Erdley, Newman, Mason, & Carpenter,
2003) and issues in later personal adjustment (Ladd, 2006; Parker
& Asher, 1987). In Bagwell, Newcomb, and Bukowski’s’ (1998)
longitudinal study, adults who had lower levels of preadolescent
peer rejection reported having greater self-worth as adults, whereas
those who felt high levels of peer rejection as children were shown
to have higher levels of psychopathological symptoms.
Another developmental challenge is dealing with exposure to
risky behaviors among peers. Having more friends that parents
think of as a bad influence can be a concern given that peers
328 PEA ET AL.influence problem behaviors such as smoking, alcohol use, drug
use, and delinquency (Urberg, Degirmencioglu, & Pilgrim, 1997).
Eight- to twelve-year-olds are also in a developmental period
when a good night’s sleep is especially important for healthy
functioning. While we know that sleep patterns change and develop
constantly during adolescence (Laberge et al., 2001) and
emerge from complex interactions of biological needs and cultural
norms, findings of sleep time differences as a function of media
use and media multitasking are potentially important for children
because reductions in sleep contribute to daytime sleepiness
(Saarenpa¨a¨-Heikkila¨, Laippala, & Koivikko, 2000), negatively affect
executive functions such as planning, organizing one’s activities,
and allocating attention (Sadeh, Gruber, & Raviv, 2003;
Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998), and lead to other emotional and
behavioral performances such as negative mood, irritability, and
decreased motivation (Carskadon, 2002). Van den Bulck (2004)
also found that adolescents spending more time online slept less,
slept later during weekdays, and said they felt more tired.
This study thus examined a set of research questions attending
to some of the central developmental tasks of the age period
described above:
1. How do media use and multitasking relate to feelings of
social success, an important indicator of social wellbeing
and of how one is dealing with the developmental
task of intimacy?
2. How do media use and multitasking relate to the developmental
task of maintaining feelings of normalcy and
not feeling rejected, compared with peers?
3. How do media use and multitasking relate to how many
friends one’s parents think are a bad influence?
4. How do media use and multitasking relate to hours of
sleep?
5. How do media use and multitasking relate to the predominant
source of girls’ experience of both positive and
negative feelings? Here we sought to determine how 8- to
12-year-old girls derive feedback signals of social success
from online and/or in-person friends, an emerging
issue for a new media multitasking era.
Method
Participants: Characteristics and Limitations
The findings are based on results from two surveys of girls
between the ages of 8 and 12 years conducted in August and
September 2010. The survey link was advertised in the August/
September 2010 issue of the bimonthly Discovery Girls magazine,
an American publication that targets 8- to 12-year-old girls and
regularly conducts similar surveys of the interests and activities of
readers, including over 1,000,000 girls in the United States and
Canada. A half-page advertisement invited readers to visit the
Discovery Girls website and complete a survey in order to be
entered into a drawing for a free iPod.
A first survey ran for approximately 2 weeks and elicited 2,301
valid responses. A second survey, including several supplemental
questions, was released for a further 2 weeks and obtained an
additional 1,160 responses, for a total of 3,461 respondents (age 8,
n 189; age 9, n 469; age 10, n 860; age 11, n 1,033; age
12, n 910) from all 50 states of the United States and from
Canada. To prevent the same girl from responding twice, the
survey could not be retaken from the same computer.
We recognize that this sample is not necessarily representative
of the U.S. population of 8- to 12-year-old girls, because it was
restricted to readers of Discovery Girls magazine who could answer
an online survey. Ninety-five percent of the respondents had
computer access in their homes, which is well above the national
average. However, consistent with Lenhart, Ling, et al.’s (2010)
figure of 58% of 12-year-olds owning a cell phone, 60.9% of the
12-year-olds in this sample owned cell phones (for our 8- to
12-year-old girls, cell phone ownership was lower, 42.3%). We
also do not have income, parent education, race, or ethnicity data
for participants.
Despite these limitations, this type of data set is arguably much
richer and broader than most extant research with children examining
relationships between variables instead of absolute values.
For example, virtually any classroom research suffers from more
serious population constraints, homogeneity of populations, and
geographic limitations than does this data set, which draws from a
North American sample. So while we urge caution in interpreting
the base rates of the variables, we are guardedly optimistic that the
relationships between variables are not strongly affected by potential
biases, notably in income and geography.
Overview of Survey
The survey was conducted through SurveyMonkey.com, an
online survey-creation portal, and linked directly from the DiscoveryGirls.com
website. The survey consisted of five sections and
took approximately 20 min to complete. The first section asked
about age, access to computers and televisions, and some general
questions about the respondent’s friends. A second section asked
about average daily usage of different media both individually and
together with other media. The girls were also asked to report the
amount of time they spent interacting face to face both without
other media and in conjunction with other media. The third section
asked the girls to rank their level of agreement with different
statements about their general social outlook. The fourth section
asked them to compare their online friends with their in-person
friends along various dimensions. The fifth and final section included
miscellaneous questions concerning video usage, sleep, and
cell phone usage.
Materials, Procedure, Coding, and Analysis
For each of six media use categories and the seventh category of
face-to-face conversations, girls were first asked, “On an average
day, how long do you X?” where X reflects their experiences using
each of the six media categories listed below and the category of
face-to-face communication. The question was followed by a
multiple-choice scale with options and numerical values assigned
for analysis: never (0), less than 1 hour (0.5), about 1–2 hours
(1.5), about 2–3 hours (2.5), about 3– 4 hours (3.5), or more than
4 hours (4.5). The categories presented to participants were as
MEDIA USE AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING IN GIRLS AGES 8 –12 329
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