Associate professor receives grant to study screen use by young children and parents during COVID-19

The Institute of Digital Media and Child Development awarded Associate Professor Stephanie Reich (right) a two-year, $99,000 partnership grant to study screen use by young children and their parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reich will partner with Natasha Cabrera at the University of Maryland to document and compare pre- and post-media use among young children and their families during this pandemic. Additionally, they will compare developmental trajectories of children before and after the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders. The researchers are particularly interested in how media practices are related to children’s post-pandemic social-emotional, cognitive, physical, and language development.

“Life these days involves a lot of screen-based media - for work, entertainment, or even visiting with relatives,” Reich said. “However, how these high rates of screen use are related to parenting practices and child development are largely unknown. This grant will help us better document the media diet of very young children and their families and relate that to their developmental trajectories before and during this pandemic.”

Reich’s research interests include child development, parenting, peer interactions, media, and program evaluation. Her professional goal is to illuminate how parents and peers affect children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical development with the aim of creating interventions to promote physical and mental health and academic success.

​Reich is director of the Development in Social Context Lab (DISC) and serves as Associate Dean of Graduate Programs for the UCI School of Education. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Community Research and Action.
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Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development is an international nonprofit organization founded in 2013 to understand and address compelling questions regarding media's impact on child development through interdisciplinary dialogue, public information, and rigorous, objective research bridging the medical, neuroscientific, social science, public health, educational, and academic communities.