Healthy Digital Habits in Parents of Infants

About

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).

Partners

• Parkview Mirro Center for Research and Innovation
• Parkview Behavioral Health Institute 
• University of Michigan

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. (April 2021). Parent depression and phone use around their children: A phone tracking and daily survey study. Conference presentation: Society for Research on Child Development.
• 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, 584-585.   https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apa.16215 
• McDaniel, B. T. (November 2021). Considerations for understanding what individuals’ screen use is really like: Self-report versus real-time passive sensing of screen use. In B.T. McDaniel (Organizer), So you want to study media use in families? Best practices for media research. Theory Construction and Research Methodology Workshop: National Council on Family Relations.
• McDaniel, B. T., Radesky, J., Pater, J., Drouin, M., Cornet, V., Kerrigan, C., Reining, L., & Schaller, A. (under review; anticipated November 2022). Latent profiles of objective parent smartphone use and associations with depression, sleep, stress, and parenting. Paper, In B.T. McDaniel (Chair), The light and dark of parent phone use in daily family life. Symposium presented at the National Council on Family Relations Conference.
• McDaniel, B. T., Pater, J., Radesky, J., Drouin, M., Cornet, V., Kerrigan, C., Reining, L., & Schaller, A. (under review; anticipated November 2022). Parent attitudes and feelings regarding their smartphone use around their child and around parent bedtime. Paper, In B.T. McDaniel (Chair), The light and dark of parent phone use in daily family life. Symposium presented at the National Council on Family Relations Conference.

Press

• Parkview’s Brandon McDaniel awarded research grant from National Institutes of Health
• Parkview NIH grant to study new parents and smartphones
• Business of Health: Parkview scientist’s study examining parents’ phone habits and mental health

All projects