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Dr. Sarah Domoff will lead a workshop on “Addressing Social Media Use in Children: Best Practices for Clinicians in the Digital Age” at the Great Hall Banquet and Convention Center in Midland, Michigan on February 22, 2018.

Workshop objectives:
– Understand how screen media and mobile device use impacts children’s social-emotional development.
– Distinguish between normative vs. problematic use of screen media during childhood & adolescence.
– Describe assessments and interventions for problematic use of screen media by children and adolescents.

Click here for more information on how to register.

Thank you to WCMU for the opportunity to be on “Ask the Child Psychologists” on January 18, 2018. So many great questions were sent in related to parenting and screen time. For more information about the broadcast, click here.

Dr. Sarah Domoff led a workshop on “Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health” for social workers in Grand Rapids, Michigan on January 10, 2018 for Forest View Hospital’s Breakfast and Learn Series.

We are very excited to welcome Katie as the newest research assistant in the Family Health Lab! Katie is a freshman at CMU majoring in psychology and minoring in nutrition. She is interested in learning more about eating disorders and will be primarily helping with our research about teenagers and their mobile device use. Welcome Katie!

Congrats to Dr. Domoff! The Family Health Lab has been approved for a grant from CMU’s Faculty Research and Creative Endeavors Committee (FRCE). This will help us conduct our research about adolescents and their mobile device use.

Senior Katelin Crane presented “Developing an Intervention to Promote Healthy Social Media Use in an Adolescent Inpatient Population” and junior Rachel Gerrie presented “Intervention for At-Risk Adolescents: Developing and Adhering to Healthy Social Media Practices” at the 2017 Honors Exhibition. They helped get the word out about our lab and were busy talking to interested students!

Dr. Domoff will present, “Child Development in the Digital Age: How, and for Whom, Does Mobile Media Use Become Problematic?” in a guest lecture at Grand Rapids Community College for their 2017-2018 Psychology Speaker Series on November 30, 2017.

Dr. Sarah Domoff will lead a workshop on “Understanding Media and Mobile Device Use and the Impact on the Social-Emotional Development and Academic Achievement of Students” for high school teachers and counselors in school districts in Northwestern Ohio on November 17, 2017. This opportunity was organized by the Ridge Project and Project Respect.           

Maternal Beliefs about Children’s Television and Parental Mediation in a Low-Income Sample in the United States.

Domoff, S.E., Miller, A. L., Khalatbari, N., Pesch, M., Harrison, K., Rosenblum, K., & Lumeng, J .C. (2017). Maternal Beliefs about Children’s Television and Parental Mediation in a Low-Income Sample in the United States. Journal of Children and Media.

Abstract: Low-income children are at greater risk for excess screen time and negative correlates associated with screen media use. The goal of this study is to increase our understanding of low-income mothers’ beliefs and practices around their children’s television (TV) use (parental mediation). We administered semi-structured interviews to 296 low-income mothers of children ages four–eight years old in the United States. Five themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (1) mothers are confident in restriction of TV content; (2) time limits are not as important as TV content and are only necessary in extreme situations; (3) mothers make meaning of child learning from TV content; (4) mothers identified individual differences in child TV overuse; and (5) mothers’ policy on TV during mealtime depends on how they believe TV to affect child mealtime behaviors and mothers’ mealtime goals. We discuss the implications of these themes for promoting parental mediation in low-income families.

Mealtime TV Exposure and Engagement in Low-Income Families.

Domoff, S. E., Lumeng, J. C., Kaciroti, N., & Miller, A. L. (2016). Early Childhood Risk Factors for Mealtime TV Exposure and Engagement in Low-Income Families. Academic Pediatrics.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2016.12.003

Abstract:
Objective: To identify whether child and mother characteristics in early childhood predict TV exposure and engagement during mealtime in middle childhood.

Methods: A total of 220 low-income mother-child dyads participated. Children were 4.26 years old (SD = 0.51) at baseline and 5.94 years (SD = 0.68) at 2-year follow-up. Mothers completed baseline measures of child negative emotionality and parenting practices. Family mealtimes were video recorded and coded for background TV exposure and child TV engagement. Multinomial logistic regression tested whether child emotionality and parenting practices during early childhood predicted risk of child TV exposure or engagement during mealtime, relative to no TV use, 2 years later.

Results: Children with greater negative emotionality in early childhood were more likely to engage with TV during mealtime than to have no TV. Similarly, early parenting disciplinary practices characterized by over-reactivity and laxness increased the risk for child TV engagement versus no TV during mealtime approximately 2 years later.

Conclusions: We identified 2 factors that associated with an increased risk for TV viewing during meals. Helping parents manage child negative emotionality using positive parenting strategies might reduce later child TV engagement and improve the quality of family mealtimes.