Introduction
Play is essential for early children’s development, especially for five-year-olds, since they interact and engage with the world around them. Previous research has shown that children’s engagement in free play is crucial to development because it contributes to their cognitive, physical, social, and emotional growth (Ginsburg, 2007). Despite the benefits derived from free play for children, time for free play has been reduced for many children during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been postulated that children’s play was affected during the COVID-19, not only regarding the time children spent playing but also the qualitative characteristics (Kourti et al., 2021). Therefore, the study’s research question is, “how has increased exposure to screens during Covid-19 impacted preschoolers’ engagement in free play?”
The study has three sub-questions that build on the main query. The first is “What does free play mean for 5- to 6-year-old children in Saudi Arabia?” The next sub-question is “to what extent is there a correlation between increased screen time during COVID and changes in play? “The final is “to what extent is there a correlation between increased screen time during COVID and changes in learning development?” Additionally, the study has four explicitly related aims to its purposes. First, to determine how exposure to screens has impacted preschoolers’ engagement in free play in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the investigation seeks to suggest strategies through which parents can help minimize preschooler’s screen interactions. The next aim is to identify how parents perceive the effect of increased screen time on their relationship with their children. The final objective is to suggest new techno-efficiency and interactivity for positive parenthood.
Design and Methodology
The exploratory design is to be used in the study where the qualitative phase of the study will first be conducted. After that, the second phase of the scheme, which will collect quantitative data using surveys, will be done. The reason why exploratory design shall be the preferred method is because there is no previous research of such nature conducted in Saudi Arabia. Both of the stages of the study will incorporate the use of online platforms and surveys to reach to the participants. The reason why this design will be used is that it is known to provide conclusive data on the many issues. Since this research design is a two-step, first the question addressing if the screen exposure has increased due to the pandemic, is the basic assumption. Thus, if this fact is proved to be accurate, then the question of how it has affected the studentâs engagement in play will be studied.
The design method will be made feasible by the fact that only a few numbers of interviews will be done in the first phase. The data in the initial stage will be collected and analyzed, and the findings recorded. The second phase of the design shall then build onto the data gathered in phase one of the study. Thus, this design and methodology aim to collect quantitative information about the topic and then collect qualitative data that explains the quantifiable information further.
The First Phase of the Study
The participants will be grouped into three different categories as this will help later in the analysis phase. The first group of participants for the quantitative phase will be educators in Jizan, a coastal city in Saudi Arabia. The second group will be the educators of Kindergarteners in the same area focusing on slightly older children aged 5 to 6 years. The final group of participants will be parents of the kids who were known to have spent more time on the screen in the pre-COVID-19 times. This target group shall be reached through interviews where a total (n = 20 participants) will be interviewed for each category, making it 60 the number of interviews. The participants who shall be interviewed will be selected from all city corners using convenience sampling.
Since the study will aim to understand trends and get a more extensive picture, surveys will be preferred over questionnaires for the research. Surveys are known to dig deeper into a topic than questionnaires are used to reach pre-informed conclusions (Spiegelman, 2020). The purpose of this research design is to measure the strength of the relationship between the two variables. Since the two variables cannot be manipulated willingly for the experiment, the researchers shall observe the results and design conclusions. This research design is to be used because of its feasibility, especially when dealing with real-life situations, as is the case under the study. It is also expected that a causal relationship will be established in the research. Since the study aims at establishing a new techno-efficient way to enhance parenthood, this design should be used because of its efficiency in analyzing new tools.
For an individual to understand how increased exposure to screens during the Covid-19 has impacted children’s engagement in free play, the following process shall be used. First, previous predictions will be collected and recorded in an open science framework system to enhance data visualization. Previous assumptions on the topic will also be addressed, including the belief that most children in Saudi Arabia have ready access to a television, phone, or computer. The participants for the study shall include parents and educators who deal with these children. The study shall use contributors from different cities within the kingdom. The participants will be recruited using other methods, and social media is expected to bring in more participants than face-to-face recruitment. Face and content validity will be used to examine the quality of questions in the surveys, and the questions that do not meet the required criteria shall be removed.
The Second Phase of the Study
In the qualitative stage, how increased exposure to screens has impacted pre-schoolersâ engagement in free play shall be sought and answered. In this phase surveys will be conducted in all major cities in the country. The surveys in this session shall be conducted throughout the region where each respondent will be asked same questions such as what free play means to the children of Saudi Arabia. Surveys are best when trying to get insights on a pre-determined group of people and are particularly good in explaining qualitative data (Creswell & Hirose 2019). Surveys can be conducted in many ways including methods such as social networks, emails and QR can also be used (Ikart, 2019; Siraj-Blatchford, 2020). All these methods shall be used across different towns in order to add depth to the quantitative data recorded in the first phase. The qualitative changes, including the children’s learning curve before and during the pandemic, shall be surveyed. The educators and parents will have to answer how the children’s quality of play has changed since lockdown restrictions were introduced. Questions like where their children play, whether indoors or outside, will be in the surveys.
The design of the questions in this second phase shall seek to understand how the pandemic negatively impacted the child’s cognitive and physical growth. The response sought out by this phase of the study will elicit a more in-depth response by both the parents and the educators on how the pandemic has influenced the children under this study. These questions shall also be follow-up queries common in interviews, making them fit the definition of a survey. For example, if the respondents answer yes, screen exposure time has increased for the children, then the following question would be (“if yes, what mitigation measures do you think should be taken?” “If no, ignore”). This complexity may confuse the participants, but it will be assumed that all the respondents were well learned and shall understand the online survey perfectly.
In order to solve the issue of confusing surveys in qualitative research, interviews will be conducted with the researcher advised on some specific aspects to consider. Freedom of letting the interview flow in the direction that the participant wanted will be granted. The researchers shall question all possible qualitative aspects of the topic, and freedom for creativity will be granted whenever an unpredicted turn occurs as experts will be requested to conduct analyses concurrently with the questioning. The interviewers will then give their forms to fill out after the surveys are done. This phase will mainly purpose in explaining the results obtained in the first phase. Confidentiality of the respondents will be maintained in both stages of the study.
Data Analysis
The study will first analyze data using information from the quantitative data survey forms. The dependent variables, which are the number of hours that the students spend under the exposure of the screen (0 to 24), will be filled in for the COVID-19 times and pre-COVID times. The number of hours used for free play (0-24) before and after the pandemic was also filled in for analysis. The age of the children under investigation will be divided into two groups (preschoolers and Kindergarteners) and are to be analyzed separately. The genders of the young children whom the parents and the educators deal with were also recorded. Other quantitative aspects recorded for analysis were the number of siblings a child has, and the number of devices available to the child too will be considered.
While doing the analysis, only the number of hours spent on the screen will be used to predict the time children spend on free play. An increase in a child’s screen time is expected to directly correlate to the number of hours spent on the child’s free play. The degree of grammatical and vocal development will be a qualitative aspect used to confirm the effects of increased screen time. This blue light time is likely to be significantly higher before the lockdowns than during the lockdown. All the data gathered quantitively will be entered in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for analysis (SPSS). The means, medians, mode, percentages, significance levels, frequencies, and graphs will be generated and analyzed. A statistical significance of P<0.05 shall be set for the analysis.
Project Significance
It has long been agreed that increased screen time is likely to negatively influence people of all ages. However, research on increased screen time on preschoolers aged 5 to 6 years has been limited. This need has made it necessary to research the same in a place where such studies are not typical and crucial such as Saudi Arabia. This research will prove that free play for children improves them in many aspects, including their physical and cognitive abilities. This confirms previous studies on the significance of free play for children of different ages i.e. (Tortella et al., 2019). Studies have shown that children are exposed to screens as early as three months, and the level of exposure to screens continues to increase with age (Bergmann et al., 2022). The project revealed that with this increase comes other negative consequences, such as slowed learning ability. The previous literature that parents felt increased screen time reduced the time they had for interaction between them, and their children will be confirmed.
The parents can use the results of this study to know that even though children are encouraged to adopt new means of learning, over-exposing this age group to screen time may yield negative consequences. Educators who come across this study know that free play has numerous benefits for preschoolers; thus, they should always incorporate free playtime into the school timetables. Screen time is more for children with elder siblings; thus, a mode of interaction that benefits both should be encouraged by the caretakers. New technologies also need to be absorbed with much care to avoid hurting this vulnerable group. The community should learn that for maximum development of its children, systems should be set up to encourage children to meet and play together. Encouraging increased free play will also automatically reduce screen time. Thus the negative reputations associated with overexposure to screens, such as eye problems in the later phases, will not be encountered.
Contribution to Knowledge
There has been controversial literature on the actual effects of increased screen times on children and even adults. Studies before the pandemic revealed that increased screen time contributed to numerous adverse effects on the students, including obesity, depression, and poor performance, among other problems (Adelantado-Renau et al., 2019; Fang et al., 2019). When the pandemic and the lockdowns came, the body of literature concerning the topic increased rapidly, primarily due to the controversies associated with remote and online learning. Upon realizing the effects of screen time, some governments, including the Saudi Arabian government, introduced restrictions on the number of online schooling times per day (Zahedi et al., 2021). However, critics and a large body of literature argued that such recommendations lacked a valid basis and no direct correlation could be identified between increased screen time and the said adverse effects (Dienlin & Johannes, 2020; Odgers & Jensen, 2020). These differences necessitated a conclusive study to show if there were some negative effects that online learning could bring to children.
It was assumed before that the COVID-19 pandemic increased screen exposure among children. Nonetheless, this study, to avoid any criticism, will start by first issuing questionnaires that would help ascertain this fact. Both parents and educators or preschoolers will prove that the screen time significantly increased when the COVID-19 restrictions were introduced in Saudi Arabia. This confirms most previous studies on the issue that have agreed that screen time increased after the lockdowns were introduced (Pandya & Lodha, 2021; Wiederhold, 2020). With that increase confirmed, the study then will go further to determine if there is any correlation between increased screen time and changes in child play. Previously, it was known that increased screen time resulted in increased chances for zBMI for six-year-olds, even if the children played outside (Schwarzfischer et al., 2020). However, the effect of this time on screens had not been analyzed if it caused the reduction of hours spent playing outside. This study will prove more periods on the gadgets meant fewer hours of free play, meaning the disadvantages of insufficient free play could indirectly be contributed by increased screen time.
In the eastern countries of the world, especially the middle east, studies have been more focused on the effects of addictive media on the youth but never on the children. A study in China proved that children, just like youth, are very vulnerable to the media (Xie et al., 2020). The study results in China were confirmed by the responses given in the questionnaires, which greed that children were likely to extend the time spent online after regular learning time was exhausted. Therefore, the caretakers have to be careful about the extent of exposure they allow their children to have on the screens. For some guardians, though, a good explanation as to why they should restrict their child times screen exposure to less than an hour and increase their free play has to be given. Fleer (2013) would give the best answer to this where it is argued that a child’s direct interaction with the environment is a significant contributor to their social-emotional development. This study will conform to the body of knowledge by confirming that children exposed to more screen time had a slower mental and physical growth.
It is no doubt that children are less likely to play when alone than when in a group. Having children in a community playing together could result in reduced screen time. This would serve two purposes; first, bringing the advantages associated with free play, and second, mitigating the disadvantages associated with increased screen time. As earlier stated, the two variables are interdependent; therefore, as one reduces, the other increases. Therefore, some diseases such as zBMI caused by increased screen exposure may be reduced by free play.
This study will also seek to understand how various qualitative aspects of play have been affected by the pandemic. Ginsburg (2007) extrapolated the importance of children playing regularly to their development. Kourti et al. (2021) further demonstrated how reduced screen time increases not only their play hours but also their play quality. This study shall prove that for the Saudi Arabian children, the lack of good quality play catalyzed by home restrictions by the government has also contributed to the negative effects seen on the learning of children since the pandemic started. When the children are faced with an option between choosing poor quality play confined indoors and interacting with the highly addictive gadgets, they often choose the screens, as parents and educators stated in the questionnaires. Thus, this study will confirm the existing literature that poor quality play has negative impacts on 5- to 6-year-olds.
A relationship between socio-demographic factors such as the child’s age and gender to the level of exposure to screen time should be analyzed. No relationship is expected between a child who is five years old and those six years. Similarly, there is no difference in exposure between the boys and girls in this study. A distinction shall be established in social classes as children living in less developed parts of the country are more exposed to screen time than those living in rural areas. It will also be observed that parents exposed to more screen time had children who were also more exposed. This finding signifies those parents and educators could actively control this negative trait by avoiding screen exposure, which would also benefit them. The argument mentioned above that by making the devices hard to obtain, the children will have lesser time to engage with them, and more time to play outside will also be proved.
Screen exposure on children has been widely studied and documented in the recent past. The level and degree of the effects are often controversial. Therefore, conclusive research of single correlations and results would be more beneficial. This study aims to see if there was any chance that this screen exposure could influence free play. By having the question of the meaning of the free play and how beneficial it is to the growth and development of a child, the study will ensure that future studies could focus on means of providing good quality free play. By proving that there is a direct negative correlation between screen time and free play, it will be discovered that reducing one may increase the other. Finally, by checking the extent to which screen time has changed learning development, parents and educators will know that more time on the phone could mean less intelligence for the child.
Conclusion
Increased exposure to screen time could negatively influence free play for children in preschool in all Saudi Arabian provinces. A strong negative correlation between the two variables will be established in this study. These two factors cause numerous disadvantages to the children; hence parents are advised to use the recommendations that will be suggested and elsewhere to reduce these effects. Further, researchers should use the will be given to find better ways to reduce screen time while still maintaining the benefits that come with the communications devices. However, from this study, it will be shown that lowering screen time will increase free play to a degree.
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