Parents' Perception of the Impact of Electronic Media on Language Development in Preschoolers in Sri Lanka

Despite the benefits, excessive screen time on electronic media detrimentally affects children's development. Electronic media usage in Sri Lanka has become prevalent among parents and children. Language development is critical for preschoolers, and any impact on it produces irreversible consequences in the child's later life. The present study was conducted to ascertain the parent's perception of the impact of electronic media on preschool children's language development in the Kalutara District of the Western Province of Sri Lanka. A piloted and validated questionnaire comprising eight indicators with a 5-Likert scale was used to collect selfreported parental responses. The responses were preprocessed to combine strongly disagree and disagree into disagree, and agree and strongly agree in to agree. The neutral responses were omitted. Descriptive and inferential statistics of χ2 were used to analyze the data. The parents believed that electronic media affect positively on listening comprehension, the building of vocabulary, correct pronunciation, and drawing capabilities while negatively affecting the picking up bad words, inappropriate gestures, loss of interest in reading story books and telling a story, and fine motor capabilities such painting, drawings and pre-writing among preschoolaged children in Sri Lanka. The differences in ratings result from sector and gender of parents imply that most parents are unaware of the impact of electronic media on their children's language development.