This research examined YouTube viewing habits of children and their parents’ perceptions when the age of YouTube watching is declining. The purpose of this research is to provide information that can positively affect the needs of parents regarding ...
This research examined YouTube viewing habits of children and their parents’ perceptions when the age of YouTube watching is declining. The purpose of this research is to provide information that can positively affect the needs of parents regarding infants and children’s watching YouTube and the development of them. Accordingly, the following research questions were chosen.
Research Question No 1. How about the reality of infants and children’s watching YouTube?
Research Question No 2. How about the parents’ perception of infants and children’s watching YouTube?
The subjects of this study are parents who have infants and children from 0 to 5 years old as their kids. From July 25 to August 8, 2022, questionnaires were directly distributed to some area of Seoul and Gwangju for a total of two weeks or collected by mail, and a total of 388 out of 413 questionnaires were used as final analysis data, excluding 25 unfinished or unreliable. The collected data were statistically analyzed using the SPSS 26.0 program. Frequency analysis was conducted to investigate the general characteristics of the research subjects and the reality of infants and children’s watching YouTube, and descriptive analysis was conducted to find out the technical statistics of the variables.
In order to examine the difference according to the background variable of the research subject, T-test, the mean difference test, and ANOVA, the analysis used when three or more groups see the difference in the mean for the dependent variable, were conducted. Moreover, in the case of a nonparametric method in categorical data, a chi-square test was conducted to examine the differences between groups, and Fisher verification was conducted for accurate verification. The post-test was a pairwise comparison, and Scheffe was used for an additional analysis to see the average difference between each group.
The following results were obtained from the research problem of this research.
First, as a result of analyzing YouTube viewing habits of children, the age at which infants and children firstly watched YouTube was the highest at 2 years old, and the highest response was to cope with the situation to soothe and pacify them. In addition, infants and children watched YouTube mostly for more than 30 minutes and less than 3 hours, and the time spent watching it increased on weekends. When watching YouTube, infants used smartphones mostly, and infants used iPads mostly. When watching YouTube, the most common response was that infants watch it with their parents, and as they get older, they watch it alone or with their siblings without a guardian. Among the YouTube content types, both infants and children mostly watched channels composed of their favorite characters, but as they got older, they more watched channels that their peers run, so they can feel sympathy and channels that they could acquire new information and knowledge.
Second, as a result of analyzing parents' perceptions of infants and children's watching YouTube, as a positive response, the highest response was that infants played well alone and children were able to acquire various information on their own. As a negative perception, the highest response was that both infants and children became over-immersed in YouTube. From the perception of parents, the influence of infants and children's watching YouTube on their development, the highest was social and emotional development, followed by cognitive development, language development, and physical development. The difference in perception based on the general background of parents was examined according to the relationship with their kids, respondents' age, education level, and employment status. Although there was no statistically significant difference in the overall perception of the development area according to the respondents’ age, education level, and employment status, when it comes to language development the father and grandparents group had more influence on it than the mother group.
Currently, there is a lack of research on infants and children's watching YouTube and most of them are targeting children aged 3 to 5. However, as the age of watching YouTube is declining, specific guidelines for it along with information on the development of infants and children should be arranged.
Therefore, the results of this research, which focuses on the reality of infants and children's watching YouTube and parents' perception of the impact of it on their development, are expected to be used as basic data for parental education that can positively affect the development of infants and children regarding YouTube watching.