DEVELOPMENTAL-TRENDS IN TELEVISION COVIEWING OF PARENT-CHILD DYADS

In this study, long-term trends in joint parent-child television viewing are taken as prototype for developmental changes of the parent-child relationship during adolescence. To describe and compare trends of television coviewing in different configurations of family members, trajectories of daily television viewing, measured with Nielsen-type people meters over a time period of three years, were analyzed using time series methods. The findings show the transferability of hypotheses about general developments in relations between the generations on coviewing behavior of adolescents aged 14-16 with their parents to predict differential declines in the four parent-child dyads.