Early exposure and adaptability of smart phone devices among young children and parental perception of their usage in a semi urban, middle class population in india

Background: To find out the extent of early exposure to smart phones among young children in a semi urban, middle class population and to ascertain the parental perception about their usage.
Methods : This pilot, cross sectional study was conducted at Dept of Pediatrics in a Zonal hospital in East India between June to September 2017. To assess the exposure of young children to smart phone devices and parental perception, we prepared a 17 point questionnaire adapted from the Zero to Eight Common Sense Media 2013 nationwide survey and analyzed the data.
Results: 32% of the parents introduced smart phones to their children when < 1 year old, 28.3 % (1-2 yr), 25 % (2-3yr), 12.5 % (3-4 yrs) and 1.3 % (4-5 yrs). Early introduction of smart phones to children is found to have associated with increased frequency of smart phone usage subsequently which was statistically significant (p <0.01). 72.4% of children were observed to have a daily screen time of less than 30 minutes, 46.1 % of the parents gave smart phones to their children to keep them calm at home and in public places, 40.8% of parents gave to do household work. 51.3% of parents opined that smart phones are useful for children in early childhood when given under proper supervision and with limited screen time.
Conclusion : There is a urgent need to accelerate research and formulate guidelines for smart phones usage in young children to achieve "Digital Literacy" in developing countries like India.