Media use and Coping in Tweens during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public and scholarly debate about the effects of media on youth has been a topic of concern since the twentieth century. These concerns were further amplified and accelerated with heavy use of and reliance on media for everyday living and learning with the homebound conditions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the public discourse about children’s media use and school safety concerns, we conducted online interviews of 36 young people ages 9–14 years to learn about (1) their life situations, including school experience, (2) their overall media use, (3) their overall worries and difficulty with their situations, and (4) their stress management and coping strategies during the fall semester of 2020. While tweens reported using media more during the pandemic than before, media did not seem to completely displace other activities. Tweens engaged in media, non-media, and hybrid coping strategies to relieve stress, enhance their mood, and stay connected to others outside their home. This qualitative study was a first step in understanding the effect of COVID-19 on tweens within the context of their coping and resiliency building, and how media factor into these processes. Highlights The tweens in this study experienced a wide variety of formats for their schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic with most experiencing at least some type of virtual education (hybrid or completely online). Tweens were using more media in the fall of 2020 than before the COVID-19 pandemic, and they shared that they use the media as a tool to attend school, to help with schoolwork, to connect with others, and for mood management. The most frequently mentioned coping strategy by the tweens involved using media in various ways. Hybrid media and non-media strategies were developed such that media enhanced non-media activities. The tweens in this study sought a variety of coping strategies which involved media, ignored media, and integrated media.