Infants are growing up in a complicated digital world, where media within the household is used to meet varying needs of the family. This paper is a version of the Presidential Address I gave in 2024 to the International Congress on Infant Studies in Glasgow. The address focused on convergence, defined as the replication of core findings across multiple methodological approaches, using examples drawn from family media ecology. The CAFE consortium is provided as an illustration of a global collaboration which created more precise measures of family media ecology and measured more diverse populations. The Dynamic Relational Ecological Approach to Media Effects Researcher (DREAMER) framework shaped the discussion from the role of individual child factors to broader structural factors. Converging findings on infant cognitive constraints on learning from media via the transfer deficit were discussed. Then both amelioration of the transfer deficit via joint engagement and exacerbation of negative outcomes due to technoference demonstrated the dynamic and relational nature of family media ecology. Structural factors, such as the COVID pandemic, drastically changed family media ecology globally. For some digital inequity led to underconnectivity and poorer outcomes and for others digital connection via videochat supported infant outcomes. Taken together the review concluded that multiple converging evidence-based findings are needed to tackle complex problems like growing up the digital age.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Studies suggest that pre-bedtime screen exposure disrupts the circadian rhythm by suppressing melatonin release in the pineal gland. This study investigates melatonin suppression in toddlers after screen exposure in the home environment. We hypothesized that viewing a video as opposed to viewing a picture book before bedtime would suppress melatonin release and disrupt subsequent sleep. METHODS Thirty-two toddlers aged 15 to 24 months participated in a within-subject design. On 2 consecutive evenings, caregivers exposed their toddler for 15 minutes to either a video on a touchscreen with the blue light filter deactivated or to a picture book, starting 45 minutes pre-bedtime. To determine melatonin concentration, caregivers collected 1 saliva sample before exposure (baseline) and 2 saliva samples 5 minutes (post_1) and 20 minutes (post_2) after exposure. Toddlers’ sleep–wake patterns were monitored using actigraphy. RESULTS Multilevel models revealed that salivary melatonin increased from baseline to post_2 irrespective of touchscreen or picture book exposure. Changes in melatonin concentration from baseline to post-exposure measurement and sleep behavior did not differ as a function of exposure condition. Sleep behavior was unrelated to melatonin suppression scores. CONCLUSIONS Contrary to expectations, our results suggest that viewing a 15-minute video on a touchscreen within an hour of bedtime is insufficient to suppress evening melatonin release and disrupt sleep under these experimental conditions in German toddlers. More studies with toddlers under naturalistic conditions are needed to understand the relevance of screen light-induced melatonin suppression as a mechanism to explain relationships between screen exposure and sleep health.

OBJECTIVE:Sleep problems affect nearly 25% of 2- to 5-year-old children and are associated with poor cardiometabolic health and may contribute to poor emotional well-being. Given that exposure to background media can be conceptualized as a form of chronic noise exposure, which has been linked to reduced sleep quality, in this preregistered study (OSF https://osf.io/g7jbf/?view_only=830fcc92058f4ecca0e0c83413c4f0b9) we tested a) whether background TV is associated with the quantity and quality of sleep in children aged 2- to 5-years in Canada, Sweden and the United States and b) whether child daily screen use duration or foreground media was associated with sleep quality. METHODS:From February 2019 to August 2021, 885 parents recorded child exposure to background media and child sleep outcomes (sleep duration [daytime and nighttime], sleep interruptions, sleep latency, and parental concerns with child's sleep), as well as child age, parent socioeconomic status, and child daily screen use duration. Cluster analysis was used to produce sleep profiles to categorize children into poor and good sleepers. RESULTS:Hierarchical regressions indicated background TV was not associated with sleep outcomes, controlling for family demographics and foreground media. However, longer foreground exposure was associated with poorer sleep quality and predicted poor sleep status. In addition, there were country-related differences in child sleep quality and media use. CONCLUSIONS:Foreground media use was significantly associated with poor child sleep, while background media exposure was not. As sleep is an episodic event, future research should examine cumulative effects over time between media use and sleep.

Parental motivations for their own and their child's media use may shape the quality of media experiences and ultimately child development and family well-being. However, validated scales are lacking. The current paper describes scale development and validation of the Media Motivations for Child (MEMO-C) and Parent (MEMO-P) in 501 parents with young children (2-5 years old). The MEMO-C measures motivations for children's media use, while the MEMO-P measures motivations for parents' own use, emphasizing parents' regulatory and relational goals. Each scale had a three-factor structure (MEMO-C: Regulate, Occupy, Connect; MEMO-P: Regulate, Relax Alone, Connect). These factors demonstrated strong psychometric properties including high reliability, convergent validity, and incremental validity, uniquely predicting child- and parent-related constructs. By measuring parental media motivations through a regulatory and relational lens, these scales enable researchers to more closely examine how family media use is associated with child development and family members' well-being.

Media has the potential to hinder children's language development if it disrupts or displaces parent-child interactions. However, little research has examined the wider family media ecology and how this might relate to the home language environment during infancy and early childhood. The current research utilized a longitudinal study to examine associations between the family media ecology (joint media engagement, technoference, and child television screen time) and children's quantity of child talk and parent/child conversational turns. Participants included 250 families with children (Wave 1 M age = 15.85 months) who completed a number of questionnaires and observations around media and language at two time points approximately one year apart. Higher technoference was related to lower quantity of child talk at the first wave only, but children who had higher television screen time demonstrated lower quantity of child talk and experienced fewer conversational turns 1 year later. However, there was no significant association between joint media engagement or parental technoference on quantity of child talk or conversational turns over time. Reducing television screen time in early childhood may be one strategy to encourage quantity of child talk and to enhance the home language environment.

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing platform for young children and is largely characterized by low content quality. This study examined associations between YouTube viewing in toddlers, family demographics, child executive functioning (EF) and YouTube content quality. Participants include 361 largely white/non-Hispanic (72%) parents and their 24-to 26-month-olds (50% female) in a community-based cohort study; data from the baseline wave is used in this analysis. Parents completed surveys and children completed three EF tasks (Snack Delay, Shape Stroop, Reverse Categorization task). Parents reported whether their child watched YouTube or YouTube Kids, and links to the last 10 videos viewed were collected. A total of 1032 videos were coded for 6 different features, and a total quality score was calculated for each video. YouTube viewing was very common: 258 (71.5%) toddlers watched YouTube or YouTube Kids versus 103 (28.5%) toddlers who never watched YouTube. YouTube viewing was associated with parent minoritized race/ethnicity, unemployment, single parenting, and higher child daily screen time. Videos had high levels of attention-capturing "bedazzling" features (39.1%) and vicarious pleasure (48.6%), but fewer had high levels of educational content (16.7%) or positive role modeling (15.4%). Child EF scores were not associated with the content of YouTube videos viewed. Predictors of higher-quality YouTube content viewing included higher income and children not attending childcare. These results have implications for both YouTube platform design and parent decision-making about content.

Parents today face increasing challenges in managing children's media use, which are often accompanied by intense feelings of guilt. This study examines the prevalence and predictors of mother's parental media guilt surrounding their own and their child's media use. Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed data from 474 U.S. mothers (65% White, M child age = 7.48 yrs). Approximately half of mothers endorsed moderate or higher levels of guilt on several media guilt related items. Maternal guilt about their child's media use was significantly associated with higher maternal depression, lower media efficacy, and greater child problematic media use (PMU). In contrast, mothers' guilt over their own media use was associated with maternal depression and child PMU. Media content and screen time did not predict guilt levels. Younger maternal age predicted both types of guilt. Findings suggest that maternal media guilt is both common and complex and may be more closely tied to perceived parenting ideals and emotional well-being than to actual media behaviors.

Infancy is an extraordinary period of human development, in which babies turn sensory and environmental information into meaning in the cradle of their caregivers' affective and attentional cues. Babies express what they are thinking and feeling through smiles and gazes long before they develop expressive language. Most developmental research focuses on mother-infant dyads within a controlled lab environment, despite the complexity of young children's caregiving ecosystems, which range far beyond the mother-child dyad and include caregivers at a distance via technology like video chat. This study uses a novel state space approach to examine relations between the sensitivity of two caregivers-what we call "mutual sensitivity"-and infants' real-time affective and attentional states during video chat sessions. In this analysis of recorded semi-naturalistic video chat interactions from 47 triads (parent, infant, and on-screen grandparent), we find that mutual sensitivity toward the infant is associated with concurrent infant positive, alert affective states (low-medium arousal and positive valence). However, contrary to our second hypothesis, we did not find associations between mutual caregiver sensitivity and infants' real-time likelihood that they would concurrently engage in joint attention across the video chat screen. We discuss the implications of these discrepant findings across affective and attentional domains and the utility of this newly described mutual sensitivity variable to understand children's caregiving ecosystems beyond the dyad.

In-person co-play between infants and adults develops rapidly during infancy, but little research has examined how families play together over video chat. Research demonstrates that video chat may support family connections, especially with grandparents and other family members separated by physical location. However, video chat interactions also place significant socio-cognitive demands on infants that may impact the frequency and variety of family play. The present study examines predictors of intergenerational virtual play compared to in-person play. We conducted an OSF pre-registered secondary analysis of data from a longitudinal study of 47 infant-parent-grandparent triads who recorded up to three naturalistic Zoom video chats and a session when they met in person. All instances of attempted infant-grandparent play were coded for playful activity type (e.g., dancing, hide & seek), duration, and whether the infant was successfully engaged in play (e.g., responded by smiling, vocalizing or imitating). Descriptive analyses revealed variability in play between families and across sessions. To capture the variety of ways in which grandparents, parents and infants played together, we fit growth models to predict the frequency of play bouts, the number of different types of playful activities observed (play repertoire), the proportion of time engaged in play, the proportion of play bouts for which infants were positively engaged, and the proportion of play bouts initiated by infants during video chat sessions. Across analyses, age was the strongest predictor of infant play on video chat. We then compared video chat play to play during the in-person session and found that play repertoire was significantly greater on video chat than in person. This study highlights the potential of digital tools to enhance intergenerational family relationships and social interactions through play. Video chat may serve as a high-quality supplemental activity for separated families.

Screen media use and its consequences for early development is a topic of ongoing discussion. In particular, the potential impact of screen media use on sleep has received increasing attention in recent research. However, the causal nature of this association in children under 5 years of age is unclear. This review draws on the decision rules proposed by Kraemer et al. (1997) to elucidate the relationship between potential risk factors and predefined outcomes. We evaluated empirical evidence of the association between screen exposure and different sleep parameters in infants and children from 0-to 5-years. We found ample correlational research and a few longitudinal studies that support the conclusion that screen exposure is a variable disruptive factor for sleep duration. Moreover, screen exposure was correlated with infants’ and young children’s sleep schedules. Although evidence of associations with sleep quality was generally less conclusive, three out of four randomized controlled studies demonstrated that screen media interventions targeting content, duration, or timing of screen exposure significantly reduced caregiver-reported or objectively measured sleep quality, preliminarily justifying the term causal disruptive factor. Based on our review, we encourage researchers to target screen exposure in experimental and intervention studies to reveal the causal effects on sleep duration and quality. We also advocate for more precise definitions and objective assessments of sleep behavior and screen exposure. A strong empirical base is required to inform far-reaching recommendations on early screen media use by bodies such as the World Health Organization.

Past research links media use to infant negative affect, and parents report using media to cope. However, trait-level measures mask within-person effects that reflect mechanisms more directly. In the current study, 401 predominantly White (70.32%), college-educated (88.03%) parents (75.56% mothers) of infants 12 to 24 months old (M=16.43 months, 51.37% boys) completed daily diaries reporting the frequency of parent and child activities, behaviors, and affective states for 21 consecutive days. Temporal network modeling was used to examine associations among parents’ daily reports of infant affect, media motivations, and parenting behavior. On days when infants were fussier than usual, parents reported more frequent yelling and more frequent media use to occupy children, regulate children, and regulate parents’ own emotions the same day, and more media to occupy children the next day. The reverse was not true: Media use did not predict negative affect the next day. On days when parents reported more frequent media use to relax alone and to regulate children than usual, they also reported more frequent comforting the next day, while more frequent media to connect with children one day predicted higher infant positive affect the next day. Again, the reverse was not true. Thus, temporal effects suggest media use may be an adaptive strategy, at least in the short term. Critically, daily within-person effects were not found at the between-person level, underscoring the importance of examining fluctuations within individuals to identify mechanisms and potential intervention targets.

Objective. Early screen exposure is associated with poorer attention, inhibitory control, and language development outcomes. However, the content and context of media exposure are better predictors of outcomes than overall amount. The present study evaluated whether infants' digital media exposure and maternal digital media use were concurrently and longitudinally associated with infant development in 187 infants at 4 and 8 months. Design. Mothers completed a questionnaire on family media exposure in different contexts, the short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, and the Developmental Profile 3. A series of multiple linear regressions was performed to investigate associations between media use and infant development in the socioemotional, communicative and cognitive domains. Results. Positive maternal strategies such as using media for educating and amusing the infant were positively associated with socioemotional development at 4 months of age; time dedicated to reading books with the infant (either electronic or paper books) and using screens to communicate were positively associated with infant communicative and socioemotional development at 8 months of age. Mothers' overall usage of media and use of digital media during childhood routines, as well as the time infants spent daily on a device at 4 and 8 months of age, were associated with lower emerging socioemotional and communicative skills. Conclusions. Findings highlight the potentially positive and negative impacts of very early digital media exposure and could have public health significance.

Government responses to COVID-19 included workplace and childcare closures. Many parents worked from home while caring for preschool children. Media use increased worldwide for adults and young children. This study examined how government responses were linked to family media use by testing whether policy stringency predicted preschool children's screen time and parents' motivations for child media use. Data were analyzed from 2,365 parents of 2- to 5-year-old children in five countries: Canada, the United States, Israel, Sweden, and New Zealand. Higher stringency was associated with decreased screen time, though changes in screen time depended on parental income and education. Children from lower-resourced homes had the highest screen time while experiencing low stringency levels. Parents' motivations for children's media use to calm their children and for their child's enjoyment were less likely with higher stringency. Motivations also depended on child age; parents were more likely to use media to calm their younger children than their older children. Media motivations also differed with family resources; less resourced families were more likely to use media for calming their children. Our discussion focuses on how structural factors (policies, supports, and resources for parents) relate to family media patterns and how future research can inform our understanding of policy-related outcomes on children.

Digital media has the potential to disrupt or support children’s socio-emotional development. The aim of this meta-analysis was to clarify the inconsistencies in research surrounding early-childhood digital media exposure and the association with children’s socio-emotional outcomes. We identified 84 correlational and experimental studies investigating 61,865 neurotypical 0–6-year-old children. For the 72 correlational studies, there was a small but significant positive association between children’s daily exposure to media and their socio-emotional development, with a stronger association for socio-emotional difficulties, suggesting that more exposure was associated with worse socio-emotional outcomes. For the 13 experimental studies, there was no significant association. However, this meta-analysis is limited due to the availability of data in the literature and quality of children’s media exposure measures.

Over the past decade, children's digital media exposure has increased rapidly, raising concerns about its potential negative impact on language development. While broader family ecology (especially parents) and the context of how media is used are known to matter in shaping children's language development, the roles of parent personality and child temperament in shaping media consumption remain understudied. To address this gap, this study introduces a holistic model examining parent personality, child temperament, and media use as predictors of language development in 2-year-old children, both concurrently and longitudinally. In Study 1, 464 caregivers (nfemale = 222) of 17- to 30-month-old monolingual English-speaking children (nfemale = 323) were recruited via Cloud Research and Prolific. Caregivers were 76.94% White and had a median education of a 4-year college degree. The study assessed parent personality, child temperament, media use duration, motivations and contexts of media use, and child language outcomes. Study 2 measured a subset of these caregivers (n = 90) 1 year later. Results suggest parent conscientiousness directly impacts children's media use and indirectly impacts vocabulary. The impact of children's negative affect on vocabulary is mediated through their technology use. Educational motivations for using media and presence of joint social context did not moderate media's impact on vocabulary. However, duration of digital media use at 2 years predicted vocabulary 1 year later, regardless of parent personality or child temperament. This study emphasizes the importance of the broader family ecologies, including parent personality and child temperament, as well as longitudinal impacts of media use, calling for more nuanced, context-sensitive guidance over one-size-fits-all recommendations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Parental burnout has detrimental consequences for both parents and children, highlighting the importance of identifying accessible resources that buffer against parental burnout. Digital media may be one tool that parents use to regulate their day-to-day emotions, but existing research that primarily relies on global estimates of typical media use limits our understanding of real-time processes. In the current study, 401 predominantly White, college-educated parents of infants 12-24 months old completed 21 daily diaries reporting on parental burnout symptoms, parenting experiences, and motivations for family media use. Temporal network analysis revealed different findings across time scales (same-day vs. next-day) and levels (within- vs. between-subjects). On days when parents reported more burnout symptoms (i.e., exhaustion, distance, overwhelm) compared to their usual levels, they also reported using more media to regulate their emotions on the same day. Exhaustion, specifically, predicted parents' regulatory media use the next day, though there were no between-person links. Using media to connect was associated with feeling less distant from children in general and on the same day. Parents who found their children more difficult to manage used more media to regulate their own emotions on the same day, but less overall. These patterns and differences across networks suggest that media use may be an adaptive short-term strategy that parents use when feeling more burned out or struggling in their parenting role. Understanding why a specific strategy might be adaptive for parents can inform targeted guidance to help parents better manage their day-to-day parenting-related emotional challenges.

In the area of early language development, understanding links between screen media, vocabulary, and grammar in 5-year-old children is crucial yet complex. While previous studies have exposed a negative association between screen use and vocabulary, the roles of content and context remain less explored, especially within the Swedish context. This study aims to address these factors. This study examined 89 5-year-old Swedish children and their parents. Language assessments of vocabulary and grammar were administered with the child by a clinician, and parents completed the Media Assessment Questionnaire (MAQ 2.3) online. Results indicate a negative association between screen time and both grammar and vocabulary skills at age 5, suggesting that increased screen media exposure during early childhood might hinder language development. Screen content quality, particularly educational and prosocial content, was positively associated with vocabulary development, but not grammar. Exposure to non-Swedish content was linked to lower vocabulary and grammar scores. In conclusion, this study underscores the significant association between screen media use and language development in children, highlighting the importance of considering content and duration. It contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics between screen media and language development, offering insights into media practices for fostering language skills at the time of school entry.