DISTRACT seminar with Andreas Lieberoth: "What do people mean when they talk about "screen time"?

On the 19th of November 2021, associate professor at DPU Andreas Lieberoth gave a DISTRACT seminar talk entitled "What do people mean when they talk about "screen time"?

Abstract

International research on proposed psychological, behavioral and societal impacts of technogies like social media, mobile phones and tablets has been forced to run very fast indded, to catch up with public discourses. This presentation sums up three interrelated studies investigating the views and worries of Danish parents and media representations about the risks of “screen time”.

Based on a content analysis of voices and worries represented in Danish news media to map the broad public conversation, we conducted two studies of parents: In a cross-sectional design we tested the hypotheses that levels of parental worry over screen time would be mediated by demographics and individual tendencies towards perfectionism/maximizing, subscription to popular neuromyths or views of the ‘good childhood’. In a case-control design we tested parents’ abilities to predict adverse outcomes of what they perceived as excessive gaming, while measuring their children’s cognitive control, psychologycal wellbeing and indicators of addiction according to the problem gaming litterature. 

When visiting SODAS I want to bring the findings from these studies together to open a discussion about how future research and communication might best benefit parents and decision makers in a space heavily influenced by worries, supposiitons and contested expert voices.

Biography

Andreas Lieberoth is an associate professor in educational psychology at the Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, and a senior research fellow at the Interacting Minds Center (IMC). His work centres on how new technologies affect behaviour, learning, work, and play, and especially how these issues are perceived in society.