eaSEL: Promoting Social-Emotional Learning and Parent-Child Interaction through AI-Mediated Content Consumption

TL;DR

eaSEL is an AI system that enhances children's social-emotional learning during media consumption by generating reflection activities and facilitating parent-child discussions without needing to watch videos together.

Contribution

The paper introduces eaSEL, a novel AI-mediated platform that integrates SEL curricula into media consumption and supports parent-child interactions around digital content.

Findings

Children reflected more on emotional content after using eaSEL.

Parents reported increased engagement and deeper conversations.

eaSEL effectively detects social-emotional moments in transcripts.

Abstract

As children increasingly consume media on devices, parents look for ways this usage can support learning and growth, especially in domains like social-emotional learning. We introduce eaSEL, a system that (a) integrates social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula into children's video consumption by generating reflection activities and (b) facilitates parent-child discussions around digital media without requiring co-consumption of videos. We present a technical evaluation of our system's ability to detect social-emotional moments within a transcript and to generate high-quality SEL-based activities for both children and parents. Through a user study with N=20 parent-child dyads, we find that after completing an eaSEL activity, children reflect more on the emotional content of videos. Furthermore, parents find that the tool promotes meaningful active engagement and could scaffold deeper conversations around content. Our work paves directions in how AI can support children's social-emotional reflection of media and family connections in the digital age.