Digital Parenting in the Global South: Integrating Digital Media into Everyday Toddler Care and Family Life

In the quiet hours of a modern household, a familiar scene often plays out: a parent, perhaps exhausted from a long day, hands a smartphone to a toddler to calm a tantrum or keep them seated during a meal. This moment is no longer an anomaly but a standard part of daily life for families across the world. For decades, researchers have studied how parents manage the digital tools their children use, a field known as digital parenting. Much of what we know comes from wealthy Western nations, where experts have developed guidelines on screen time and the rules parents set to protect children from online risks. These studies often focus on older children who can talk back or make their own choices. However, the very youngest children, those between the ages of one and four, are different. They cannot negotiate; their parents make every decision for them, from what they watch to how long they watch it. Furthermore, the vast majority of the world's population lives in the Global South, where cultural values, extended family networks, and limited resources shape parenting in ways that Western guidelines often fail to capture. Without understanding these diverse realities, the global conversation about children and screens risks being one-sided, offering advice that fits some families but misses the mark for others.

A team of researchers set out to fill this gap by listening directly to parents in South Asia. They traveled to Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to interview twenty-six parents of children aged one to four. Their goal was to understand how these families actually use digital tools in the thick of everyday life, what they believe these tools do for their children, and how they navigate the tension between convenience and concern. The researchers found that while parents in these regions share some worries with their Western counterparts, their experiences are deeply rooted in their local cultures and daily struggles. They discovered that for these families, a screen is not just a source of entertainment or a potential danger; it is a tool woven into the fabric of family relationships, a source of both connection and conflict, and a constant subject of negotiation within the home.

The study began by looking at how parents in these four countries adopted digital technology. The researchers used a framework that usually explains why people start using new technology, focusing on whether a tool is useful, easy to use, and supported by friends or family. They found that these factors certainly mattered. Parents in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan turned to smartphones and tablets because they were practical. A mother in Bangladesh noted that her child learned songs and new words faster through videos. A father in Sri Lanka explained that he gave his son the phone at parties to keep him calm. In urban India, parents saw educational apps as a way to give their children a head start in learning letters and numbers. For many, these devices were a lifeline, helping them manage the chaos of feeding, soothing, and entertaining a young child while they tried to get other work done.

However, the researchers realized that the standard models of technology adoption did not tell the whole story. They found that parents were driven by three deeper, more complex concerns that went beyond simple usefulness. The first of these was how screens changed the way families related to one another. For some, watching cartoons or religious songs together became a cherished family ritual. A mother in Pakistan described how sitting together to watch videos made them feel closer. Yet, for others, the screen created a wall. An Indian father recounted how his daughter would refuse to eat dinner unless she was watching something on the phone, leaving the whole family silent around the table. In these homes, the device could either bring people together or push them apart, depending on how it was used.

The second major finding was the constant struggle parents faced in trying to control these devices. Unlike older children, toddlers cannot be reasoned with, and parents found themselves in a daily battle to set limits. In India, some mothers tried to enforce strict rules, limiting screen time to three short sessions a day. In Sri Lanka, parents felt they had to constantly monitor content to ensure nothing harmful appeared. But in Bangladesh, the struggle was often more intense. One mother admitted that even when she took the phone away, her son would cry until she gave it back, so she ended up giving him at least two hours a day just so she could work in peace. This revealed that for many parents, the ability to set rules was not just about willpower; it was often constrained by the need to get things done and the difficulty of managing a child's emotional outbursts without a screen as a buffer.

The third dimension the researchers identified was how parents judged the impact of screens on their child's development. This was not a simple calculation of good versus bad. Parents weighed the benefits against specific fears. A father in Bangladesh celebrated that his child knew many English words because of YouTube. In contrast, a mother in Sri Lanka shared that her son had faced a speech delay, and she believed stopping device use helped him improve. An Indian mother worried that too much screen time made her child less interested in playing outside, while a Pakistani mother described her daughter as becoming dependent on watching videos, crying for them even when visiting other people's houses. These concerns were not abstract; they were tied to the specific hopes and anxieties of each family regarding their child's future.

The researchers concluded that to understand digital parenting in the Global South, we must look beyond the simple question of how many minutes a child spends on a screen. The decision to use technology is a complex negotiation involving family relationships, the stress of maintaining control, and deep concerns about a child's growth. The study suggests that current guidelines, which often come from Western contexts, need to be expanded to include these relational and cultural realities. For parents in South Asia, the screen is a double-edged sword: it is a tool that can soothe a crying child and teach a new word, but it is also a force that can disrupt a family meal or create a dependency that is hard to break.

This research offers a clearer picture of what is happening in millions of homes across South Asia. It shows that parents are not simply passive users of technology; they are active managers trying to balance the immediate needs of their children with long-term developmental goals. The findings suggest that advice for these families should not just focus on setting time limits. Instead, it should help parents understand how to use screens in ways that strengthen family bonds rather than weaken them, and how to navigate the difficult balance between using a device as a helpful tool and avoiding the trap of over-reliance. By listening to these parents, the study provides a more complete understanding of digital parenting, one that respects the cultural values and daily realities of families in the Global South.