The role of socioeconomic status in U.S. children's co-viewing television and family member relationship quality over time

Previous research on family television co-viewing has tended not to examine variation by socioeconomic status (SES). This research uses time diaries from socioeconomically and racially diverse child and adolescent respondents (ages 8-17) from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) in 2002 (N = 1918), 2007 (N = 1288), 2014 (N = 743), and 2019 (N = 622). I investigate socioeconomic differences in children's total shared TV time and how SES interacts with children's TV co-viewing to shape child-reported relationship quality with their most co-viewing family members. I find that parental educational attainment is significantly associated with total shared television time, but not consistently with child-reported closeness to family members. I find that co-viewed television time is only significantly associated with closeness to their most co-viewing family member in some waves for those whose head of household education is less than high school. Mothers being the most co-viewing family member, however, emerged as significantly associated with child-reported closeness at all waves, emphasizing the importance of co-viewing television specifically for the mother-child relationship. Prior State of KnowledgePrevious research has explored the relationship between children's co-viewing television with family, but without consideration of SES-based differences in television time.Novel ContributionsParental educational attainment is significantly associated with children's total shared TV time. Socioeconomic status and co-viewing time are not consistently significantly associated with child-reported closeness to their co-viewing partner, though mothers being the co-viewer is associated across sample year.Practical ImplicationsThis has implications for researchers investigating the role of socioeconomic status in television and family dynamics, helping to tease apart classed and gendered television-viewing patterns.