PROJECT SUMMARY
Healthy parent-child interactions are critical for children’s well-being and development. In infancy, parent
sensitivity (e.g., responsiveness) is linked to parent-infant attachment security and emotional co-regulation,
which lay the foundation for mental health, academic performance, and relationship quality over time.
Therefore, promoting high-quality parent-infant interactions has the potential to improve children’s healthy
habits across their life. The caregiving environment has changed as parents have integrated smartphones into
their lives. The vast majority of adults own a smartphone, and many report device use in the presence of their
children (e.g., during playtime, mealtime, bedtime). Additionally, parent phone use has been negatively
associated with parent-child interactions and responsiveness; phone use is likely also indirectly associated with
parent responsiveness via impacts on parent sleep, mood, and stress. With the prevalence of parent phone
use and potential for this phone use to impact parenting, parent-child relationships, and infant and child health
and well-being, interventions are needed to promote healthy digital habits in parents. The proposed study will
provide the information necessary to understand the phone use of parents of infants and parent perspectives
on strategies to develop healthier digital habits. This will support the development of data- and parent-informed
programming to assist parents of infants in order to foster healthy caregiving for infants. This will be
accomplished through a longitudinal, mixed method study of 250 parents of infants. The study will consist of
three waves: Wave 1 where parents complete a baseline survey and then 8 consecutive days of nightly
surveys (while their phone use is also tracked via an app); Wave 2 where parents complete a follow-up survey
and a subsample complete interviews; and Wave 3 where we develop programming and then a subsample of
parents participate in focus groups to provide feedback on the programming. Specific aims include: (Aim 1) (a)
To identify profiles of parent phone use using mobile device-based sensing and (b) to examine associations
with parent mental health; (Aim 2) to examine parents’ perceptions of (a) their phone use, (b) potential impacts
on themselves and their infant, and (c) strategies for and barriers to developing healthier digital habits; (Aim 3)
to develop feasible and parent-accepted community programming for parents of infants on healthy phone
habits, based on the information obtained in Aims 1 and 2. We target families of infants due to the need to
begin healthy habits early in life. Ultimately, we will use the results from this research to support future trials of
the program and its effectiveness at creating healthier phone habits in parents and healthy habits in children. If
successful, this research will lead to a program that will be implemented in the community, which has the
potential to build healthier parent-child relationships and healthier child development.