The Connection Between Screen Time And Emotional Trauma: A Case Study Of Bruneian 3-Year-Old Children

Abstract

The study aims to explore if there is an association between screen time and emotional overload among the 3-year-old children in Brunei. It is vital to find out the association of screen time with emotional development at this stage of child development. Children at this age naturally experience emotional outbursts that peak around this time, allowing them to learn to exert emotional regulation. This study involved 12 daycares in Brunei that volunteered to participate in the research with a sample of 165 parents with 3-year-old children. The duration of screen time as well as the levels of emotional overload among the children in this study are analyzed using descriptive statistics. The data was further analyzed with the Pearson Correlation Test to determine the association between screen time and emotional overload. The result of the study shows that most of the children in this study spent more than the recommended amount of screen time recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The study's most crucial conclusion is that there is a mildly significant positive association between screen time and emotional overload, with a value of 0.33* (p 0.01), indicating that the more screen time a child spends, the more likely a child is to experience emotional overload in this study. This study recommends that parents, guardians, and educators moderate and oversee their children's use of digital gadgets based on these findings.