Healthy Digital Habits in Parents of Infants

About

parents and child

Parent smartphone use (SPU) has been negatively associated with parent-child interactions and responsiveness. Heavy SPU and social media use among adults has also been linked with poor sleep, mood, and stress, while poor parent mental health and stress are linked to more negative parent-child interactions. Thus, parent SPU during infancy and early childhood may be an important opportunity to intervene to establish healthy SPU habits, and potentially improve parent sensitivity, parent-child attachment, and more. Our aim is to examine real-time parent phone use and linkages with parent mental health. We will also develop programming for parents of infants centered around forming healthy digital habits.

We first conducted a pilot study where parents completed five days of nightly online surveys/time diaries (indicating times physically with their child, mealtimes, etc.) as well as installed an app on their phone (which tracked their phone use continuously across the five days). This pilot work and these methods were then directly applied to the methods proposed in two grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and we received funding in May 2021 from the NIH, a first for Parkview.

We have now completed data collection for the NIH-funded study, in which we recruited almost 300 parents of infants and assessed their smartphone use, mental health, and more via online surveys, objective phone use measurement (via a passive sensing app on their smartphone), interviews, and focus groups. We are currently in the middle of disseminating our findings and developing educational programming for parents of infants based on our findings.


Partners

Funding

  • In May 2021, we were awarded an NIH grant (a first for Parkview) from the National Institute of Nursing Research to conduct this research and to begin developing this programming for parents of infants. This NIH-funded work will go on for two years.

Publications and presentations

  • McDaniel, B. T., Pater, J., Cornet, V., Mughal, S., Reining, L., Schaller, A., Radesky, J., & Drouin, M. (2023). Parents’ desire to change phone use: Associations with objective smartphone use and feelings about problematic use and distraction. Computers in Human Behavior, 148, Article 107907. [link]  
  • McDaniel, B. T., Drouin, M., & Cornet, V. (2023 November 8–11). Objective phone use during time with one’s partner and relationship and individual well-being [Paper presentation]. 2023 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Orlando, FL, United States. 
  • McDaniel, B. T., Pater, J., Radesky, J., Cornet, V., & Drouin, M. (2023 November 8–11). Daily fluctuations in parent depression and associations with smartphone use around their child and parent responsiveness [Paper presentation]. 2023 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Orlando, FL, United States.  
  • Xu, T., & McDaniel, B. T. (2023 November 8–11). Patterns of parent smartphone use throughout the day and associations with parent characteristics [Poster session]. 2023 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Orlando, FL, United States.  
  • McDaniel, B. T., Drouin, M., Radesky, J., Pater, J., & Cornet, V. (2023 September 20–23). Do perceptions matter more than actual phone use? Parent phone use, technoference, and perceived responsiveness to child [Poster session]. 2023 Digital Media and Developing Minds International Scientific Congress, Washington, D.C., United States. [link
  • McDaniel, B. T., Drouin, M., Pater, J., Radesky, J., Mughal, S., Cornet, V., Reining, L., & Schaller, A. (2023 March 23–25). Parents’ desire to change phone use: Associations with smartphone use and feelings about phone use [Paper presentation]. Society for Research on Child Development 2023 Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, United States. 
  • McDaniel, B. T., Adams, E. L., Hohman, E. E., Cornet, V., Reining, L., & Kaiser, Z. (2022). Maternal nighttime phone use and impacts on daily happiness and exhaustion. Acta Paediatrica, 111(3), 584–585. [link]Acta Paediatrica, 111(3), 584–585. [link
  • McDaniel, B. T., Pater, J., Radesky, J., Drouin, M., Cornet, V., Kerrigan, C., Reining, L., & Schaller, A. (2022 November 16–19). Parent attitudes and feelings regarding their smartphone use around their child and around parent bedtime [Paper presentation]. 2022 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, United States. 
  • McDaniel, B. T., Radesky, J., Pater, J., Drouin, M., Cornet, V., Kerrigan, C., Reining, L., & Schaller, A. (2022 November 16–19). Latent profiles of objective parent smartphone use and associations with depression, sleep, stress, and parenting [Paper presentation]. 2022 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, United States. 
  • McDaniel, B. T. (2021 November 2–5). Considerations for understanding what individuals’ screen use is really like: Self-report versus real-time passive sensing of screen use [Workshop presentation]. 2021 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Virtual. 
  • McDaniel, B. T. (2021 April 7–9). Parent depression and phone use around their children: A phone tracking and daily survey study [Conference presentation]. Society for Research on Child Development 2021 Biennial Meeting, Virtual. 

Press

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