The Impact of Young Children’s Media Use on Peer Interactions and the Mediating Effects of Language Development
Department of Child Studies, Chongshin University, Seoul, Korea
Yoonju Cho
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Objective: This study explored the mediating effects of language development on the influences of young children’s media use on positive and negative peer interactions.
Methods: The data came from the 2013 Panel Study on Korean Children (N = 1,215) and were analyzed to assess the mediating effects of media use on positive and negative peer interactions, using SEM with the bootstrapping method by means of SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 20.0.
Results and Conclusion: The results show that increased media use affects positive and negative peer interactions through language development. This indicates that, while media use does not directly affect positive and negative peer interactions, it appears to increase the difficulty of developing language ability; as the language development worsens, undesirable peer interactions may develop. Thus, language development seems to play an important mediating role between media use and peer interactions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Keywords: media use, language development, peer interactions, mediating effects, bootstrapping method
©The Korean Association of Child Studies
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Corresponding Author: Yoonju Cho, Department of Child Studies, Chongshin University, 143, Sadang-to, Dongjak-gu, Seoul, Korea E-mail: [email protected]
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