Despite the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation of no screen media for children under the age of two, 72% of parents believe that early exposure to computers was “mostly helpful” and 58% believed that early exposure to educational television programming was “very important” (Rideout et al., 2003).  Prior research has shown that quality educational screen media can be beneficial for children at least as young as two.  Moreover, we know that exposure to specific foreground television programs designed for infants can enhance their language development (Linebarger & Walker, 2005). Furthermore, children who are exposed to high-quality children's educational programs during the preschool years have enhanced cognitive development, language development, and prosocial skills, as well as a long-term positive impact on school readiness and academic performance (Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, & Wright, 2001).  Still, no longitudinal research has been conducted to assess the impact of infant exposure to television or to computer programs on subsequent school readiness.

The research available for infants and young children indicate that quality media can have benefits for even the youngest viewers, depending on structure, content and production features (Barr, Muentener, Garcia, Fujimoto, & Chavez, 2006; Krcmar, Grela & Lin, 2007; Linebarger & Walker, 2005; Richert, 2007). What is needed, then, are systematic analyses of the ways young children’s media products substantiate their educational claims by incorporating beneficial production techniques as well as more general learning strategies known to enhance children’s development. Thus, the focus of this content analysis is to determine the extent to which young children’s media products (television programs, DVDs and video-games) which claim educational or developmental benefits substantiate those claims through age-appropriate content and production characteristics theoretically and empirically shown to support children’s learning and development. Additionally, this analysis will be used to inform the intervention for an experimental longitudinal healthy media study. Moreover, the knowledge gained from these analyses will be utilized to construct healthy media intervention packages for a larger longitudinal experimental analysis of the contribution of quality media to child development and school readiness.

Over the past decade, the market for infant and toddler media products has increased tremendously. Baby videos are a common feature in American homes, and many parents of infants and toddlers use these products with the expectation that they will have some educational or developmental benefit for their child (Zimmerman, Christakis & Meltzoff, 2007). The average American 6-month-old infant has at least four DVDs/videos, including such titles as Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby and Baby Genius (Barr, Lally, Hilliard, Andolina & Ruskis, 2009). By 18 months of age, the number of DVDs/videos jumps to over seven on average. Recent surveys indicate that the typical child under three spends 95 minutes of an average day exposed to some form of screen media of which 61 minutes is in front of a TV screen (i.e., TV, DVDs/videos; Rideout & Hamel, 2006). To date, there is no published research systematically documenting the educational content present, or the types and relative quantities of language-promoting teaching strategies used in commercially available infant and toddler videos. The focus of this study was to systematically analyze the ways infant-directed programs incorporate content and strategies (e.g., labeling), known to aid young children’s language development. We were curious about the extent of language-related developmental claims made by producers of infant and toddler programming, and hypothesized that these claims would be accompanied by a greater amount of language-related general content and specific language-promoting strategies.