About this session

Thursday, 1:40 PM - 3:10 PM

Parents’ media use matters: Links to child regulation, problematic media use and parental executive functioning.

Many studies have examined associations between child screen use and child outcomes in isolation but have not considered the overall family media ecology. The Dynamic, Relational, and Ecological Approach to Media Effects Research (DREAMER; Barr et al., 2024) framework considers how patterns of media use within the family media ecology shape child media use and subsequently affect short- and long-term child outcomes. Each paper examines the role of parents within the family media ecology. The first paper focuses on bidirectional associations between parents' regulatory media use for themselves and their 1- to 2-year-olds, parent emotion regulation during parenting, and parent-reported child emotion regulation. Adaptive strategies that parents have to regulate their own emotions during parenting is a key predictor of both parent and child regulatory media use and child emotion regulation 6 months later. The second paper includes parents of 2-year-olds and reveals that objectively measured parent executive functioning (EF) is an independent predictor of parent regulatory media use, even after accounting for parenting stress and depression. The final paper reports that parental stress and technoference is related to 6- to 7-year-old’s problematic media use (PMU) one year later. The discussant will use the DREAMER framework to highlight the importance of parent’s own media use within the family media ecology to better understand media effects on children.

Paper #1
Title	Bidirectional associations among parent and child regulatory media use and emotion regulation across time
Presenting author	Dr. Margaret L. Kerr, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States

Paper #2
Title	Parent regulatory use of media: Contributions of parent executive functioning, stress, and depression
Presenting author	Jenny Radesky, University of Michigan, United States

Paper #3
Title	Stressed Out and On Screens: Associations between parent stress, technoference, and childhood problematic media use
Presenting author	Sarah M. Coyne, Ph.D., Brigham Young University, United States

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Session chair
Rachel F. Barr, Ph.D., Georgetown University, United States

Discussant
Rachel F. Barr, Ph.D., Georgetown University, United States

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