Research on the relationship between parents' media literacy and preschoolers' learning quality: the mediating role of preschoolers' electronic device use

Introduction In the digital era, electronic products have become deeply embedded in the daily life and learning of young children. Parents' own media literacy is related to the appropriateness of children's exposure to electronic devices. Fostering young children's learning quality requires parents to cultivate a healthy family media education environment. This study attempts to construct a mediation model to examine how parents' media literacy is linked to young children's electronic product usage and learning quality, and aims to explore the interaction mechanisms and influence paths among these three variables. Methods A total of 331 questionnaires were collected through online surveys. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were employed to examine the relationship between parents' media literacy and young children's learning quality, and the mediating role of young children's electronic product usage between the two was also analyzed. Results The results revealed that parental media literacy was significantly positively correlated with young children's digital device use. Meanwhile, parental media literacy was also significantly positively associated with young children's learning quality. When digital device use was introduced as a mediating variable, both parental media literacy and young children's digital device use showed significant correlations with children's learning quality. Digital device use exerted a partial mediating effect between parental media literacy and young children's learning quality, with an indirect effect of 0.080. Discussion Based on the above findings, the researchers propose targeted educational suggestions: enhancing parents' media literacy to foster a positive family media environment; cultivating appropriate electronic product usage habits in young children to exert the positive effects of such products; and attaching great importance to the cultivation of learning quality to lay a solid foundation for young children's lifelong development.