Which is a better way to measure screen use by children: Wearable camera or Fixed room video?

Although families and professionals working with families are very concerned about the potential influence of screen use on children, the evidence is often inconclusive. An important contributor to the lack of compelling evidence is the weak measure of screen use commonly used – self or proxy reporting, which is known to be imprecise due to bias and recall problems. A further limitation of common screen use measures is that they typically just focus on the time duration of screen use, despite other aspects such as the type of screen, content and context likely to be important. Developing better measures of screen use has been identified as a critical issue to advance our understanding of how screens can be used positively by children and how to avoid potential negative influences.

Visual recording devices to measure child-screen interaction

One approach to developing a better measure is to record visual information about child-screen interaction. This has been trialled using cameras either worn by the child or placed in a room where the child is. Cameras can record either a series of still photograph images at set intervals (for example every second) or record video. These different options are likely to have advantages and disadvantages but had not been directly compared before our study.

In our study we had 48 children aged 3-14 years do a series of activities in a lab for about an hour. The children wore a camera on their chest which took an image every second, and a video camera was placed on a tripod to record video of the lab space. Children performed activities using a range of screens (TV, laptop, handheld game, console game, tablet computer, smartphone and smart watch) along with activities not using screens (reading a book, drawing on paper, puzzles). Researchers viewed the wearable camera images and the room video and coded each frame of each device for what screens children were using and noted issues with each method. Overall, there was generally very low agreement between the codes based on wearable camera images and room video frames for all technology types.

Wearable camera images vs fixed video frames

We found wearable camera images had advantages of being in closer proximity to the child and technology and was more focused therefore the wearable camera was able to capture active engagement with the technology and could capture the content of the technology. As wearable cameras can move with the child they can also capture different locations of use. However, wearable cameras had disadvantages of a smaller field of view, the potential of blurred and blocked images, and missing quick use of technology. With the camera mounted on the chest sometimes technologies were not visual either due to position of the child (laying on their stomach) or placement of the technology (on child’s lap, out of field of view of the camera). Further, movement of the child/camera and slow shutter speed led to blurry images. Also, if technology use occurred quickly (e.g., brief glance at a smartwatch) it was often missed with images only being captured every second. 

Similarly, we found the room video had advantages of a wider field of view with the ability to capture the context of technology use. As the whole room was captured simultaneous use of different screens along with the context of technology use were able to be better captured (e.g., activity playing a video game using TV and gaming console compared to passively watching the TV), as well as co-viewing and co-use of technology. However, the room video had disadvantages as the wider field of view sometimes limited the quality of the video image. It was thus hard to determine the content on the screen and on occasions hard to determine if the child was actively engaged with the technology or not (for example capturing technology just in the periphery of the child).

In conclusion – although there is not currently a perfect method available for measuring screen use by children, recording visual information can avoid some of the issues with relying on self- or proxy- report. However, worn and stationary position and time-lapse images and video each have limitations and advantages. Therefore, researchers need to carefully select the best method to address their specific research question.