Sensationalist Media Coverage and Parental Screen Guilt: Testing the Effects of Science Communication on Restrictive Family Media Practices

Introduction

Communication research has long been concerned with the effects of media on children (Delia, 1987; Wartella & Reeves, 1985). The Payne Fund Studies of the 1930s were the first and most comprehensive of these investigations (Jowett et al., 1996). Despite their methodological rigor and mixed findings, the nuance of the Payne Fund Studies was eclipsed by Henry James Forman’s (1933) Our Movie Made Children, a popular summary of the studies that preceded the publication of the scientific reports. History repeated itself in the 1970s, when “the summary [of the Surgeon General’s report on the effects of televised violence on childrens’ behavior] was released weeks before the technical reports, so it was the summary rather than the research that made the news” (Bogart, 1972, p. 498). This pattern continued with the advent of personal computers and the Internet in the 1990s and early 2000s (Wartella & Jennings, 2000). Meanwhile, media effects research about children became increasingly represented in the pages of medical journals, contributing to the field’s pathologization of screens (Bickham et al., 2016; Mannell et al., 2024). Today, screen time guidelines from authoritative sources like the American Academy of Pediatrics are largely based on correlational, cross-sectional studies that rely on self-reported measures of media exposure and child outcomes (Blum-Ross & Livingstone, 2018; Pappas, 2020).

How News Media Shape Public Understanding of Science

This legacy is reflected in contemporary media coverage of research about children and screens. Neuhaus & O’Connor (2025) found that nearly three-quarters of online news articles about screen time published between 2016 and 2021 focused on children under age 10 and portrayed screens as harmful. Six studies accounted for 43% of all coverage, and the articles with the most engagement on social media combined sensationalist elements (e.g. “Children’s Screen Time Has Soared in the Pandemic, Alarming Parents and Researchers”) with information about a study’s design and limitations.

Figure 1, Neuhaus & O’Connor (2025)

One potential explanation for this phenomenon is that time- and resource-constrained journalists rely heavily on embargoed press releases from research institutions and publishers, which “encourages pack reporting of research from a few selected journals… depicting research as little more than a series of isolated discoveries” (Kiernan, 2006, pp. 109, 133). Agenda setting and framing theories further suggest that the news media’s selection of studies to cover and editoral decisions about how to describe the research may influence the public’s perception of the science (Entman, 1993; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Together, these structural forces may contribute to a biased representation of the media effects literature.

Cultivation of Parental Beliefs and Screen Guilt

Separately, Wolfers et al. (2025) recently proposed a construct to capture “the feeling of transgression parents experience as a function of their children’s screen usage” (2025, p. 105). Their longitudinal study demonstrated that children’s screen time at Wave 1 predicted increased parental screen guilt at Wave 1 and parent’s stress about their child’s screen time at Wave 2. Parental stress in turn predicted reduced satisfaction with the parent-child relationship. Critically, there was no significant relationship between children’s screen time at Wave 1 and relationship satisfaction at Wave 2. Although they did not explore the source of guilt or its influence on behavior, their study points to the “disservice done by the general framing of media use, especially use by children, as inherently problematic” (Wolfers et al., 2025, p. 123)

Figure 4, Wolfers et al. (2025)

According to cognitive dissonance theory, parents may struggle to reconcile the messaging they encounter about children and screens in the news and their own family media practices (Festinger, 1957). To reduce this discomfort, parents may update their prior beliefs with this new information, which may in turn lead to changes in their use of media with and around their children. For example, a parent that internalizes the message that screens are harmful to children may restrict children’s access to media by setting time limits or engaging in other restrictive practices. The rationale for these practices may not be communicated effectively to the child, potentially hindering the development of their own self-regulation (Distefano & Meuwissen, 2022; McCurdy et al., 2020).

Current Study

Despite extensive research on media effects and growing attention to parental attitudes about screens, no research has yet examined whether cumulative exposure to sensationalist messaging about children and screens predicts parental screen guilt, and whether guilt subsequently predicts changes in restrictive family media practices. The currrent study addresses this gap by testing several communication theories in the context of parents’ beliefs and behaviors regarding children’s media use. Building on and extending Wolfers et al. (2025) and Neuhaus & O’Connor (2025), this work aims to link media framing to parental behavior using a multiple wave longitudinal design to test a novel pathway of media influence on children, operating indirectly through parental beliefs and practices. Findings are expected to inform efforts to educate parents about the effects of media on children.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

This study will test the following research questions:

• RQ1: Does cumulative exposure to sensationalist messaging predict higher levels of parental screen guilt?

• RQ2: Does parental screen guilt predict increases in restrictive family media practices over time?

The figure below illustrates the hypothesized relationships between constructs. Path a (H1) expects that parents exposed to more sensationalized screen time research content will report higher levels of screen guilt at baseline and over time. Path b (H2) expects that changes in restrictive family media practices are related to changes in a parent’s individual level of screen guilt over time. These effects are expected to be indepedent of family characteristics such as child’s screen time.

flowchart LR
    A["Exposure to<br/>Sensationalist Messaging<br/>"]
    B["Parental<br/>Screen Guilt<br/>"]
    C["Restrictive Family<br/>Media Practices<br/>"]
    D["Controls:<br/>Child screen time<br/>Parent characteristics<br/>Family demographics"]
    
    A -->|a H1| B
    B -->|b H2| C
    A -.-> C
    D -.-> A
    D -.-> B
    D -.-> C
    
    style A fill:#E8F4F8,stroke:#2E86AB,stroke-width:2px
    style B fill:#FFF4E6,stroke:#E67E22,stroke-width:2px
    style C fill:#E8F8F5,stroke:#27AE60,stroke-width:2px
    style D fill:#F5F5F5,stroke:#95A5A6,stroke-width:1px

Study Design and Analytic Plan

Design

This study will integrate into the RAPID Project’s national household survey, an ongoing monthly assessment of U.S. parents with children under age 5 (Fisher et al., 2023). Employing a five-wave longitudinal design, it will investigate relations between parents’ (target N = 160-200) exposure to information about children and screens, feelings of screen guilt, and family media practices.

Measures

Exposure to screen time research

• Frequency: “In the past month, how often did you get parenting advice or information about screen time from…” [social media, online message boards, parenting websites or blogs, other parents, books or magazines, doctors or other medical professionals, teachers] (Auxier et al., 2020)
• Perceived sensationalism: “When you encountered parenting advice or information about screen time in the past month, how often did that information…”
  • portray screen time as harmful (e.g., toxic or addictive)
  • use alarmist language (e.g., “irreversible damage,” “skyrocket”) or make suggestions for avoiding risks (e.g., “screen time detox workshop”) (Neuhaus & O’Connor, 2025)
• Exposure validation (Wave 1 only): “For each headline, please indicate whether you recall seeing or reading an article or post with this headline, or something very similar to it, during that time.”

Parental screen guilt

“How much guilt, if any, do you feel about much media your child has been consuming in the past MONTH?” [None (0) to A great deal (10)] (Wolfers et al., 2025)

Family media practices

Existing items from the RAPID Survey media module (RAPID Household Survey Filterable Codebook, n.d.):

• Total screen time (SCREEN.002.2, .003)
• Use for emotion regulation, respite, reward (SCREEN.009-.011)
• Child tantrums when screens end (SCREEN.012)
• Parent perceived device distraction (SCREEN.013)
• Proportion of educational vs. entertainment (SCREEN.002/003 a/b/c)
• Co-viewing frequency (SCREEN.008)
• Learning value beliefs (SCREEN.004)

Controls: Child screen time, age; parent age, gender, education; family income, household composition; device access (Wave 1).

Analytic Strategy

RQ1 will be answered using between- and within-person hierarchical regression, predicting guilt from exposure to sensationalist messaging, controlling for children’s screen time and family demographics:

\[\text{Guilt}_i = \beta_0 + \beta_1(\text{Exposure}_i) + \beta_2(\text{Controls}) + \varepsilon_i\] \(\text{Guilt}_{ti} = \beta_0 + \beta_1(\text{Exposure}_{t-1,i}) + \beta_2(\text{Guilt}_{t-1,i}) \\ + \beta_3(\text{Controls}) + \varepsilon_{ti}\)

RQ2 will be answered using multilevel regression predicting Wave t+1 practices from Wave t guilt, controlling for prior practices:

\(\text{Practices}_{ti} = \beta_0 + \beta_1(\text{Guilt}_{t-1,i}) + \beta_2(\text{Exposure}_{t-1,i}) + \beta_3(\text{Practices}_{t-1,i}) + \beta_4(\text{Controls}) + \varepsilon_{ti}\)

Discussion

If results support these hypotheses, they would demonstrate that the media information environment surrounding children’s screen time has measurable consequences for family functioning through a specific pathway: sensationalist coverage cultivates parental guilt, which drives restrictive practices that may undermine the developmental goals parents seek to achieve. These findings would have important implications for how science — particuarly fields that are riddled with mixed results — is communicated to parents. This work would further undermine the utility of “screen time” as a concept for both research and practice and set the stage for desinging and testing more ecology valid conceptions of the relationship between children and media.

Limitations and Future Directions

The measure of exposure to and perception of sensalionslit science reporting, while novel and potential more valid than typical self-reports, still relies partly on retrospective recall. Future research could use ecological momentary assessment to minimize this bias. Additionally, while the longitudinal design establishes temporal precedence and person-mean centering strengthens causal inference, only experimental manipulation of media exposure could establish causality. Beyond intervention studies, more research is needed to determine whether the observed portrayl of screen time in popular media extends to other controversial parenting domains, such as feeding and sleep practices.

References

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