Table 3.

Generated subcodes, their frequency of occurrence and some exemplary parental statements.

		n	Interview	Examples
Function (n = 166)	Wellbeing	43	1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13	‘Like I said, very important for him, he can focus and calm down, gets lost in what he sees and he is occupied, so it’s sometimes very, very important for his emotional wellbeing.’ (Interview 12) ‘But sometimes it’s like she urgently needs it in order to get her stimulus response system back in balance, then she needs it too. If it [the content] fits, she is happy and balanced.’ (Interview 4)
	Advancement of other functional areas	16	1, 6, 9, 12	‘(…) he is picking up outstanding things from it. He gets all the numbers and figures and so on, he got all that from the iPad.’ (Interview 1)
	Social communication/exchange	16	9, 10, 11, 13	‘(…) communicating via WhatsApp, doing homework together, that’s what he does a lot, also, to compare with the whole class and help each other with certain homework.’ (Interview 13) ‘They play communicative parlor games on another platform. And considering that the result of that is, that he actually meets someone, I think, everything’s good.’ (interview 9)
	Social learning tool	12	7, 8, 10, 12	‘And then at some point, we started it [Das Sandmännchen] again, because there are pretty nice stories, also social stories. From which he can learn.’ (Interview 7)
	Safety	12	1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13	‘So, because he does not know, when he gets irritated, if he could go to the (school-) secretary in that moment and say “I want to call my mother”. That’s why he needs his mobile phone.’ (Interview 13)
	Babysitter	11	1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 12	‘(…) if I want to have some quietness and peace, he gets it, to be completely honest. If I don’t have the time to deal with him right now, because I am doing homework with the children, I am glad if he is busy with the iPad and I know he is not fooling around in that moment (…).’ (Interview 1)
	Joint family activities	11	2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12	‘Sometimes it’s nice to watch some TV with her, just to spend time with her.’ (Interview 4)
	Reinforcement	10	2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11	‘From time to time as a reward for 10 or 15 min, then we try out movies.’ (Interview 6)
	Background noise	10	1, 4, 6, 8	‘If we turn it off [the TV] and so on, especially in his room, then anger (evolves), he would scream and so on, then, at night (the TV) must stay turned on all night long, otherwise he wouldn’t sleep.’ (Interview 6)
	Social Acceptance/be part of a group	10	9, 10, 11, 13	‘We thought about it a lot, that it is also a type of coolness and also when he goes to grammar school now, we are aware that he will get the newest and best devices from us very deliberately, may it be a smartphone or brands or whatever, to not let him get excluded because of those things too.’ (Interview 10)
	Purpose in life	8	9, 10	‘Yes, it is all about this [tablet] (…) sometimes, for instance, at school, when he doesn’t know where exactly it [tablet] is at home he gets stressed and would ask whether it is safe, or somehow he got really hysterical a few days ago because he thought, well I took it with me, so the school escort had to call me (…). In his head it absorbs about 90 percent, I think.’ (Interview 10)
	Source of information	7	8, 9, 13	‘Well, TV is actually his source of knowledge. Since he doesn’t read and also no non-fiction or specialized books, he uses it as an acoustic medium to get information.’ (Interview 8)
Shared screen media usage (n = 78)	shared family time	40	1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13	‘First he wanted to draw all the time, I just opened paint then, that’s this standard painting and drawing program. And then we drew trams. All day long we drew trams.’ (Interview 12) ‘Then I went to the Gamescom with Til and (…) to the Wars Identity Exhibition.’ (Interview 9)
	(Mutual) topic of conversation	9	7, 8, 9, 10, 11	‘We need to know somewhat what he does because he obviously talks about it a lot.’ (Interview 10).
	Evening ritual	9	3, 7, 9, 10, 12	‘So this Sandmännchen, this ritual, we do together. Dinner is finished by then and we all sit there [in front of the TV] and then we cuddle and smuggle and we watch it together.’ (Interview 7)
	Educational support	7	7, 11, 13	‘He also needs me to watch it as well as a backup (…) because he has a lot of questions on whether he understands things correctly or not.’ (Interview 13)
	Monitoring	7	6, 7, 9, 10	‘(…) also, it doesn’t make sense, he is either very hysterical and I don’t know why, because I didn’t see which scene I need to explain to him, or he doesn’t concentrate on it and does something else, then there’s no need to watch it at all.’ (Interview 7)
	Media use all alone	6	1, 4, 7, 8	‘Tuesday and Wednesday there is an afternoon of video-game playing. And that’s somewhat, because to be honest, I can’t stand it, because he sits in front of it playing [video games] all the time. So I am upstairs at my PC most of the times, handling some things I need to do.’ (Interview 8)

Note. The interviews were conducted in German. Despite our best efforts, interpretation-bias as a result of the translation to English language cannot be ruled out.