The effect of emotion socialization in the family on digital media use in early childhood: The mediating role of emotion regulation skills

Digital media has become an integral part of daily life with the advancement of technology and children have become active participants in this digital world (Rideout, 2017). Children's relationship with digital media and the way they use it is considered as a critical element in terms of developmental outcomes. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of parental emotion socialization behaviors on children's problematic media use (PMU) and to examine the mediating role of children's emotion regulation skills in this relationship. The sample of the study consisted of data obtained from the parents of a total of 298 children between the ages of 4 and 8 (Ngirl=156). Data were collected through Demographic Information Form, Problematic Media Use Scale (PMAS), Emotion Regulation Scale and Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale. Parental emotion socialization attitudes were examined in terms of supportive reactions (SR) and unsupportive reactions (ESR), and emotion regulation skills were examined in terms of emotion regulation control (ERC) and variability/negativity dimensions. In the preliminary analyses, it was found that ESR was positively and negatively related to PMC; DT was positively related to ESR; and the variability/negativity dimension was positively related to both PMC and ESR. Gender was found to be significantly associated with PMC and boys had higher PMC scores, and this variable was controlled for in the analyses. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that DOT significantly predicted PMC and explained approximately 17.4% of the variance. The variability/negativity dimension predicted PMC and explained approximately 30.4% of the variance, whereas DDK was not a significant predictor. Mediation analyses revealed that the variability/negativity dimension played a partial mediating role in the effect of CLT on PMC. On the other hand, there was a significant effect of DT on DOT and a significant negative effect of DOT on PMC; while the direct and total effects of DT on PMC were insignificant, the indirect effect was significant and negative, indicating a full mediation effect in this model.