| Summary |
As the COVID-19 virus evolved into a global pandemic, a myriad of changes occurred for children and families worldwide. Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological model argues that there is a complex interaction of factors impacting child development, ranging from child specific factors (i.e., personal characteristics, genetic factors) to factors close to the child like family, school or childcare, and neighborhood (i.e., the microsystem) to factors more distal such as media, social services, and government agencies (i.e., the exosystem and beyond). The purpose of the present study was to describe some of the changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and to consider how systemic factors may have impacted those changes during the pandemic, which may in turn affect the child's development. Specifically, the study aimed to describe changes in media use and sleep patterns in young children and to investigate the relationship between child sex, household income, and media use on sleep changes that occurred over the course of the study. Participants in the present study were 88 children ages 4 to 7 whose caregiver completed one survey prior to the pandemic, and one survey in the early months of the pandemic. Survey results indicate there was a significant decrease in average daily sleep duration and a significant increase in average daily media use over the course of the study. While sleep duration decreased, children in the present sample continued to obtain recommended amounts of sleep both before and during the early weeks of the pandemic. Neither household income, sex, nor media use were related to the observed changes in sleep in the present sample. Instead, only pre-pandemic sleep duration explained a significant amount of variance in sleep changes. These findings suggest that in some ways families transitioned to a "summer vacation" schedule, rather than establishing completely new routines for a global pandemic. Families may be cautiously optimistic that changes like increased media use did not significantly impact sleep in the present sample. Given that hypothesized factors like household income and sex were also not responsible for the observed decrease in sleep, additional research is needed to determine what factors explain additional variance in children's sleep during the pandemic. |
