Overall, today’s toddlers and young children have more access to more kinds of screens
than ever before (Anderson & Pempek, 2005). However, despite this increasing prevalence in
mobile media use among children, very little research exists on how interactive mobile media
affect child development. Current research on effects of screen time on child development has
focused on the effects of TV, even when TV viewing among children has decreased and mobile
media use has increased (Common Sense Media, 2013). In light of this trend, it is imperative to
research how early childhood use of mobile media affects development. This proposed study
focuses on the amount, pervasiveness, and content of early childhood mobile media iPad use from ages 3 through 6 and its effects on the development of sustained visual spatial attention
span. In this study, the average daily media use signifies the amount of media use, the variety of
locations of use indicates the pervasiveness of use, and the level of exogenous stimuli denotes
the content of use. Researchers define visual spatial attention span as the maintenance of
attention over time to specific stimuli in a visual environment.