Early Socialization of Media Users: An Ethnographic Exploration of the First Two Years of Life

Abstract The socialization process of media use begins in the first year of a child’s life. Infants and toddlers are exposed to media in the background, they learn from screens, and acquire media-related skills from watching their family members’ behavior. Hence, it is of great importance to examine the family context in which young children develop their initial media habits, as well as how they learn from screens during a critical period of their lives. This article explores how young children are socialized into becoming media users in a longitudinal study that closely followed the development of the media habits and preferences of children from the age of three months to two years old. A combination of two qualitative methods was applied: observations at the families’ homes were conducted every three months; and in- depth interviews with parents were conducted at the beginning, the middle, and at the end of the study. Families expecting their second or third child were recruited for the study, to create comparable familial circumstances of having older siblings. The study’s findings expose parents’ limited awareness of the importance of instructive and technological mediation, as well as the need to facilitate proper conditions that would maximize the benefits of these forms of mediation. Therefore, there is a need for enhancing parental media literacy, which would enable parents to support children’s media uses and lead to the development of richer and healthier children’s media experiences