Open research questions in Child Development and Digital Technology

What the literature leaves open

• However, future research should examine in greater detail whether teachers receive adequate support in technology use, whether these applications function as facilitators or additional burdens in terms of workload, and the extent to which application content lacks standardized structures. Future studies should examine additional variables such as digital literacy, workload, and institutional policies, using longitudinal or mixed-method designs. LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This study is limited by the use of convenience sampling and self-reported data, which may restrict the generalizability and objectivity of the findings.

  Prevalence and Determinants of Parent–School Communication Applications in Early Childhood Education Institutions · 2026 · DOI

• 1737 Future research could address these limitations by incor- porating multi-informant data, including parental reports and observational methods, as well as longitudinal designs to examine changes over time. In addition, future studies may explore the relationship between parental digital behav- ior and children’s own digital media use in more depth, par- ticularly within the framework of digital socialization.

  Parental Digital Engagement and the Parent–Child Relationship: A Qualitative Study of Children’s Perspectives · 2026 · DOI

• Future studies are recommended to examine the long-term sustainability of these preventive behaviors and to explore the scalability of the peer education model in strengthening anemia prevention programs, particularly in promoting adherence to iron supplementation and healthy dietary practices among adolescent girls.

  Developing a peer-based pocket book for anemia prevention in adolescent · 2026 · DOI

• from the possibility that there is insufficient supervision - in the use of educational platforms/technologies by educators and teachers in my child's educational service. that the support given to families/parents regarding the use of educational platforms/technologies in my/daughter's educational service is insufficient. that the training of educators regarding the use of educational technologies (platforms/social media) in early childhood services is insufficient.

  Media consumption and families' (post)digital literacies: a national survey · 2026 · DOI

• The research is limited to data obtained from parents who have children between the ages of zero and three and who have a social media or e-mail address, in order to examine the technology usage status of children aged zero to three, in line with the opinions of the parents. The utilization of snowball sampling alongside online data collection tools may have inherently excluded parents with limited technological access or lower digital literacy. Consequently, this introduces a selection bias that restricts the generalizability of the findings to the broader Turkish population, predominantly reflecting the perspectives of a digitally active demographic. FINDINGS The findings of the research, which aimed to investigate the use of technological devices in children aged 0–3 years through parental perspectives, are detailed below. When Table 1 is examined, it is seen that 58.1% of mothers use technology for one to three hours, 65.5% of fathers use technology for four hours or more; 35.4% of parents use smart phones, 62.9% share their children's photos on social media platforms, 56% use technological devices to feed their children for entertainment and education purposes, 44% give them while they are doing work to control their behavior, 41.5% offer their children real experiences (guiding them to play, etc.) regarding technological devices, 37.8% distract their children, and 20.7% do nothing. As seen in Table 2, it was determined that 31.9% of children in the zero-three age group use technological devices, 44.4% of the children who use technological devices use smart phones, 36.5% use televisions, and 19.1% use tablets; 59% use technological devices with their parents, 40.9% use them with other people (alone, grandparents, siblings); 53.2% use listening to music, and technological devices for playing games, watching videos, communicating, and 46.8% use them to watch cartoons. 134 It was observed that 78.5% of children using smartphones were introduced to smartphones at 12 months or younger, 30.4% started using their phones at 12 months or younger, and 45.6% used their phones for 31 minutes or more. It was determined that 86.1% of children using television were introduced to them at 12 months or younger, 46.1% started using them at 12 months or younger, and 60% watched television for 31 minutes or more. It was determined that 67.6% of children using tablets were introduced to tablets at 12 months or younger, 82.3% started using them at 25 months or older, and 38.2% used their tablets for 31 minutes or more. It was determined that when children were not given technological devices, 64.3% showed behaviors such as aggression and unresponsiveness, 35.7% showed crying reactions, and 60.6% spent 31 minutes or more on screen.

  Examining the Use of Technological Tools by Children Between the Ages of Zero and Three, Based on Parental Views* · 2026 · DOI

• First, the analysis is limited to a single film; examining other animated films produced in different cultural contexts using similar methods would allow for testing the generalizability of the identified themes. The findings of the study demonstrate that evaluating media content for children solely within a “harm versus benefit” dichotomy is insufficient; instead, such content may assume 122 highly diverse functions depending on the context in which it is used, accompanying adult attitudes, the child’s developmental characteristics, and layers of cultural meaning.

  An Analysis of My Neighbor Totoro from a Developmental Perspective · 2026 · DOI

• 2018; scores—restrictive LPA two (Nylund-Gibson and Choi, standardized enabling composite mediation—served as continuous indicator variables. Gaussian mixture models with full covariance matrices were estimated for one through seven profiles, each with 200 random starting values and 1,000 maximum iterations to avoid local maxima. for 2020), and the eight mediation items (three restrictive, Prior to LPA, we examined the convergent and discriminant validity of four enabling, one monitoring) using exploratory factor analysis in Mplus 8.3 (2012-2018 Muthen & Muthen) with robust maximum likelihood (MLR) estimation and GEOMIN oblique rotation (the Mplus default for oblique factor analysis); N = 5,833 with FIML across cases having any valid W1 mediation indicator. Sampling adequacy and sphericity were evaluated on the pairwise correlation matrix using the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) statistic and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (computed via R psych on the listwise-complete subsample, N = 4,462). The KMO statistic was 0.846 (overall; per-item MSAs ranged 0.777–0.895, all above the 0.70 threshold), and Bartlett’s test was highly significant, χ²(28) = 14,651.70, p < 0.001, indicating that the correlation matrix was suitable for factor analysis. The number of factors to retain was determined by comparison of one- through four-factor solutions against Hu and Bentler (1999) fit-index cutoffs and confirmed via Horn’s parallel analysis (R psych::fa.parallel, 1,000 random datasets, 95th- percentile criterion). This analysis was conducted in response to concerns about the empirical distinctiveness of restrictive and enabling mediation given their bivariate correlation of r = 0.40. Model selection was guided by multiple criteria: the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC; lower values preferred), entropy (values above 0.80 indicating good classification quality), the minimum class proportion (above 5% for interpretability), and substantive interpretability (Nylund-Gibson and Choi, 2018). As Spurk et al. (2020) emphasized, statistical fit indices should be weighed against theoretical considerations, and entropy should not serve as a sole selection criterion. TABLE 1 Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations. The selected profiles were externally validated against the held- out monitoring variable. Cross-national distributions were tested using chi-square tests with adjusted standardized residuals (ASR; |z| > 1.96 = statistically significant) and Cramér’s V as the effect-size metric. Profile differences on the six distal wellbeing outcomes were assessed via the Bolck–Croon–Hagenaars (BCH) auxiliary-variable method (Bolck et al., 2004), which corrects for classification uncertainty when comparing outcome means across latent classes. Longitudinal stability was evaluated via model-estimated transition probability matrices and Cohen’s κ for class-membership agreement across waves. Primary latent-variable analyses (EFA, LPA, three-wave LTA, multi-group LTA with country as a known- class variable, BCH distal-outcome estimation, and age-moderated LTA) were conducted in Mplus 8.3 (Muthén and Muthén, 1998– 2017) with robust maximum likelihood (MLR) estimation and full- information maximum likelihood (FIML) for missing data (Enders, 2010); 500 random starts were used for all mixture models to guard against local maxima. Auxiliary analyses—descriptive statistics, χ² and Cramér’s V tests, attrition diagnostics, parallel analysis (R psych::fa.parallel; Revelle, 2026), and the supplementary k-means comparison—were conducted in R 4.5.2 (R Core Team, 2025). We acknowledge upfront that formal tests of measurement invariance (configural, metric, scalar) of the mediation items across countries were not feasible with two-indicator latent factors and are not provided by ySKILLS documentation. Cross-national comparisons are therefore interpreted under the assumption — rather than the demonstration—of measurement invariance, an explicit constraint that we revisit in the Limitations.

  Parental mediation profiles across six European countries: a person-centered analysis using three-wave longitudinal data · 2026 · DOI

• In under-resourced settings where institutional platforms are lacking, applications such as WhatsApp have become informal yet powerful infrastructures.

  WhatsApp as a mediational infrastructure: · 2026 · DOI

• Although the study involved diverse participants, the sample was predominantly mothers, which may have limited perspec- tives from fathers or other caregivers. As with most qualita- tive research, findings are context-specific and not intended for generalisation. Social desirability bias may also have 1 3Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science influenced responses during interviews. Additionally, the study explored parents’ views only; future work should incorporate children’s or educators’ perspectives to provide a more holistic understanding of digital mediation within family systems. Consent to Participate Informed consent was obtained from all indi- vidual participants included in the study. Consent to Publish All participants consented to the publication of the findings.

  Navigating Digital Parenting: Malaysian Parents’ Views on Technology for Managing Children’s Screen Time · 2026 · DOI

• The present study has provided new insights into what the home factors for crit- ical reading could include for children and adolescents across Grades 4 to 8. However, it has some limitations that should be considered. First, this study was cross-sectional and was conducted in only one region of Finland. Future studies should employ longitudinal designs with more representative samples to verify whether the developmental changes in the home factors for critical reading and 1 3J. Ruotsalainen et al. the factors associated with them are replicable when examined longitudinally as well as in other contexts. It may be assumed that similar findings to this study are more likely to be found in other countries where parents are better equipped in education and have adequate resources than in contexts where parents' capa- bilities are hampered due to lower education and income levels (e.g., Bora et al., 2026; Modecki et al., 2022; Nag et al., 2019). Second, because this was the first attempt to explore the home factors for critical reading, the questionnaire also had certain limitations. Namely, there was a ceiling effect in some overly generic items (items 10 “In our family, every family member has an opportunity to participate in the family’s discussions”, 11 “In our family, we show interest in child’s thoughts and questions”, and 24 “In our family, education and attending school are considered important”). These items may have prompted socially desirable responses. Furthermore, the questionnaire did not include items clearly formulated as hindering factors, such as views that restrict a diverse examina- tion of issues. These types of items would be important to include in future exami- nations to achieve a more profound understanding of the home factors for critical reading. All the items should also be checked for cultural validity: The items were developed with attention to cultural validity in Finland, where media literacy and critical evaluation of information are well-established concepts in education and public discourse (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2019), which supports the rel- evance of the items in this context. Third, given the exploratory nature of the home factors for critical reading questionnaire, factor analyses were conducted separately for each grade level using the same data for EFA and CFA. Subsequently, CFAs were estimated for each grade level based on the grade-specific exploratory structure as an initial model, with the aim of further developing the measure and deciding on item inclusion/exclusion. Future validation of the instrument will require independent samples to test the stability of the factor structure. Fourth, the experts highlighted the importance of parents’ own skills (Paakkari et al., 2024). In the future, it would also be important to include parental skills, such as their own critical reading abilities, to test whether parents’ actual skill levels (rather than their education levels) are associated with the home factors for critical reading. Also, the number and age range of children in the family may have an effect on how prepared the parents are in providing support for each child or how much time they have for it. Finally, while the present study revealed noteworthy findings regarding the dynamic associations between different home factor items that deserve more thor- ough examination, there is also a need to develop a more age-robust measure of the home factors for critical reading. This approach would allow for more precise analy- sis of the relationship between home factors for critical reading factors and children’s critical reading outcomes.

  Home factors for critical reading skills among parents of fourth, sixth, and eighth graders · 2026 · DOI

• Only three of five interviewed families reported using digital platform posts as bridges to build intersetting knowledge connecting online updates with real-world conversations. Research is needed to identify which characteristics of educator posts (specificity, visual content, activity suggestions, learning domain) most effectively function as bridges between digital and physical settings in educator-family communication, and whether post characteristics vary by child age group in ECEC contexts.

  Digital Platforms and Relational Practice: A Netnographic Study of Educator-Family Communication · 2026 · DOI

• The study applied Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory and Barker's Behavior Setting Theory to interpret digital communication patterns, but did not systematically compare how different theoretical frameworks characterize family silence and low engagement. Comparative analysis of how Activity Theory, Communities of Practice theory, or Critical Discourse Analysis would differently interpret the same netnographic data on educator-family digital platform communication could reveal theoretical blind spots.

  Digital Platforms and Relational Practice: A Netnographic Study of Educator-Family Communication · 2026 · DOI

• The paper documents that communicative asymmetries and educator authority within digital platforms shape families' interpretation of appropriate participation and their reluctance to respond, but does not investigate institutional mechanisms that establish or reinforce these norms. Research should examine how specific ECEC organizational policies, educator professional training, and platform affordances (design features, notification settings, permission structures) explicitly or implicitly constrain reciprocal educator-family communication.

  Digital Platforms and Relational Practice: A Netnographic Study of Educator-Family Communication · 2026 · DOI

• The study found that families engaged deeply with educator posts through off-platform activities (discussing with children, sharing with family members, extending learning at home) but this engagement was only captured through interview self-report. Longitudinal mixed-methods research combining digital platform data with video observation of home-based family discussions and artifact collection is needed to objectively measure the extent and type of meaning-making occurring across settings in educator-family digital platform communication.

  Digital Platforms and Relational Practice: A Netnographic Study of Educator-Family Communication · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies that explicit educator prompts and invitation questions significantly increase family engagement and willingness to contribute to digital platform discourse, but does not systematically test different prompt typologies. Future work should experimentally manipulate the linguistic framing, question type, and invitation specificity of educator posts to quantify which exact communicative cues most effectively shift families from passive recipients to active collaborators in educator-family digital communication.

  Digital Platforms and Relational Practice: A Netnographic Study of Educator-Family Communication · 2026 · DOI

• The study analyzed only 292 educator posts with a 7.2% family response rate (21 responses) across an unspecified number of families in a single netnographic setting. Research is needed to examine whether the identified linear communication patterns and low reciprocity rates (educators responding to 1.4 of every 10 family comments) persist across multiple ECEC digital platforms, different educator cohorts, and diverse family demographics to determine if these patterns are contextually bound or generalizable.

  Digital Platforms and Relational Practice: A Netnographic Study of Educator-Family Communication · 2026 · DOI

• In addition, from the review of the research gaps at home and abroad, it can also be found that domestic research lacks long-term planning, the professional development system is imperfect, there is no good integration of technological innovation and educational philosophy in early childhood education, and practical application needs to be further explored.

  The Changing Role of Mathematics Teachers in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Review · 2026 · DOI

• Our international respondents came from diverse cultural and societal contexts, and the concentration of responses from certain contexts might have influenced the themes that were created. For instance, the perceptions of societal safety might have shaped how online accessibility was emphasised in the responses, with variations likely between regions such as the Nordic countries and the USA. On the other hand, this diversity enriches and adds depth to our data by introducing different perspectives—this can be considered a strength in light of thematic analysis and the qualitative approach. Western countries were strongly represented in this study. Also, in the statistical analyses, we were not able to consider the country of our respondents. As such, future research should study digital parenting in other cultures and countries to explore whether there are cultural differences that might influence digital parenting. Child & Youth Care Forum1 3 Participants were asked many open-ended questions, and to avoid overwhelming par- ticipants, we used a single-item response to measure parents’ interest and competence in using digital technology, i.e. the Net promoter score (Reichheld, 2003). In each open-ended question, participants had a minimum character count. This might have shaped the depth of the responses. Also, in this study we used only parents’ responses. Future studies should examine digital parenting more thoroughly through observations and interviews. Moreover, children’s perspective should be considered. We did not consider the socioeconomic status, employment, or educational level of our respondents. These factors should be considered in future studies. Future studies should also represent parents with lower competence and interest in using digital technologies, as our participants had overall high competence and interest. Furthermore, future studies should also examine whether there are any other hitherto undiscovered concepts regarding parent- ing strategies in the context of digital technology. Longitudinal studies should also explore digital parenting’s role in overall parenting during children’s developmental phases. More- over, more knowledge is needed on the impact of digital parenting on children’s long-term development and well-being. There is strong evidence in the literature that parenting is a crucial indicator of several children’s future academic and socio-emotional outcomes (e.g., Carlo et al., 2018; Kaniušonytė & Laursen, 2021). Effect sizes in our study regarding statistical analyses were small. This suggests that also other background factors are likely to influence digital parenting. Future studies are also needed to examine other contributing factors, such as parenting style and child’s difficul- ties in learning. How the parents perceived their interest and competence in using digital technologies was associated with being more likely to mention their family’s joint digi- tal technology use. Their attitude towards digital technology and digital agency should be further explored, as it could indicate how parents raise their children with and for digital technology. Further, the parenting styles of mothers and fathers regarding digital technology use should be studied, as mothers were more likely to mention restricting digital technology than fathers. Lastly, future studies should explore digital technologies’ negative impact on families, especially with children between 6 and 12 years, and how to mitigate it.

  What is Digital Parenting? A Mixed-Method Study Exploring Parents’ Views of the Role of Digital Technology in Parenting and Family Interactions · 2026 · DOI

• The book is also an important starting point for further research on children and young people and can especially be of inspiration regarding the use of various creative methods that involve children and young people in research, to bring out the young people's own perspectives, understandings, thoughts, feelings and practices.

  Understanding The Everyday Digital Lives of Children and Young People · 2025 · DOI

• To address these gaps in the literature, we (1) examined participant responsiveness to and implementation quality of FITSTART+, a web-app delivered parent-based alcohol intervention designed for incoming first-year college students in the United States, and (2) gathered feedback on how this intervention could be adapted to other populations of parents.

  Process Evaluation and Investigation of Cultural Adaptations for an Online Parent-Based Intervention Using a Mixed-Method Approach · 2024 · DOI

• The study was guided by the main objective ‘’to assess the influence of mothers’ attitudes on social media use of adolescent girls in Tanga municipality. The obtained findings show that, Mothers are likely to have positive attitude for communication, whenever SM utilized studying, learning and other useful utilization of SM. This positive attitude has contributed to permissive parenting style and authoritative parenting style. On the other hand, harmful uses of SM among adolescent girls and negative consequences of SM have greatly contributed to negative attitude among mothers. This negative attitude has led mothers to develop authoritarian parenting style. attitudes are positively influenced by social media use of adolescent girls because, social media are essential for information and knowledge sharing, but it is important to use them responsibly with social, ethical, religious, and the other hand, political responsibility. On mothers’ attitude are negatively impacted by inappropriate uses and risky situations of social media. Positive use of social media can develop academic career, skills, economic activities, and a better lifestyle. Adolescent girls should avoid sharing contents which are centrally to societal standards, social norms, and religious values, and should only share relevant information.

  Mothers` Attitudes on the Influence of Social Media on Parenting Styles of Adolescent Girls in Tanga Municipality, Tanzania · 2024 · DOI

• While previous studies have paid much attention to the importance of school-home interaction in supporting primary academic socialisation and progress of elementary school pupils, the role of teacher-parent communication and collaboration in influencing the development of children’s and adolescents’ digital skills remains an under-researched area.

  The role of school-home communication in supporting the development of children’s and adolescents’ digital skills, and the changes brought by COVID-19 · 2023 · DOI

• Tablet computer use was not limited to a dichotomy of use and non-use; rather their use in New Zealand’s ECE services was spread along a spectrum that ranged from limited, to specialised, to comprehensive use.

  New Zealand early childhood services: Reasons for use or non-use of tablet computers · 2023 · DOI

• Over a 10-day period, parents asked their children four short open questions at the end of each day: 1) ‘What was the best thing that happened today?’, 2) ‘What was your least favourite part of today?’, 3) ‘What did you learn today that you didn’t know yesterday?’, and 4) ‘What made you smile or laugh today?’ Parents were specifically asked to make no mention of lockdown or school or virus (Covid-19).

  Children’s chatter: Daily reflections of young children during Covid-19 lockdown · 2022 · DOI

• Fine motor skills (FMS) represent a fundamental prerequisite for learning and cognition and initial work has begun to show links with screen media usage – although work is scarce and the directionality is uncertain.

  Screen media are associated with fine motor skill development in preschool children · 2022 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Child Development and Digital Technology

• Young children’s online learning during COVID-19 pandemic: Chinese parents’ beliefs and attitudes · Children and Youth Services Review · 2020 · 522 citations
• Technoference: Parent Distraction With Technology and Associations With Child Behavior Problems · Child Development · 2017 · 462 citations
• Mobile and Interactive Media Use by Young Children: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown · PEDIATRICS · 2014 · 456 citations
• Television and Video Game Exposure and the Development of Attention Problems · PEDIATRICS · 2010 · 373 citations
• Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language · Child Development · 2013 · 360 citations
• Digital Childhood: Electronic Media and Technology Use Among Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers · PEDIATRICS · 2007 · 346 citations
• Patterns of Mobile Device Use by Caregivers and Children During Meals in Fast Food Restaurants · PEDIATRICS · 2014 · 333 citations
• Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years · PEDIATRICS · 2011 · 302 citations
• Practitioner review: Co‐design of digital mental health technologies with children and young people · Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry · 2020 · 290 citations
• Prevalence, Correlates, and Trajectory of Television Viewing Among Infants and Toddlers · PEDIATRICS · 2002 · 279 citations

Most recent work

• Digital safeguarding incidents in schools with and without smartphone policies: a cross‐sectional study in England · Child and Adolescent Mental Health · 2026
• Prospective Associations Between Early Adolescent Problematic Screen Use, Mental Health, Sleep, and Substance Use · American Journal of Preventive Medicine · 2026
• In-service distance learners’ integration of generative artificial intelligence and emerging technologies: a comparative analysis with pre-service early childhood education teachers · Asian Association of Open Universities Journal · 2026
• Introducing the Ethics of Actors in Systems (EASY) Approach to Digital Advertising Literacy Through the Views of Early Adolescents · Journal of Advertising · 2026
• Letter to the Editor: Review article: The effectiveness of school‐based interventions for reducing screen time – a systematic review and meta‐analysis · Child and Adolescent Mental Health · 2026
• Early Media Use Predicts Later Executive Function Difficulties Through Problematic Media Use: A Cross-Lagged Panel Model Testing Bidirectional Relations in Middle Childhood with an Early Childhood Media Use Predictor · Media Psychology · 2026
• Perspectives on Preschool Readiness: Discussion in the Indonesian Working Mothers Virtual Community · International Journal of Early Childhood · 2026
• Exploring the associations between coparenting alliance, parental sense of competence, and reported screen use culture: Screen time, co-viewing, and behaviors in preschool children in Greece · Journal of Early Childhood Research · 2026
• Co-constructing critical data literacy in families: A technology-mediated learning perspective · International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning · 2026
• Healthy Technology Use in Schools: Implications for Screen Time, Social Media, and Smartphone Use · Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools · 2026

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