NICHD grant to support research on the influence of screen media on children’s development

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development awarded Associate Professor Stephanie Reich (right) a two-year, $150,000 grant to research how screen media influence children’s development.

Reich will utilize data from her earlier NICHD-funded Baby Books 2 project to describe the media habits of very young ethnically and linguistically diverse children at four time points in their lives  - nine, 18, 24, and 30 months.
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“We captured information about infants and toddlers' media habits with their mothers and their fathers as well as the types of media activities they engage in - solitary use, co-use with parents, and use that is interactive or passive,” Reich said.

Reich will analyze these data to identify which infant and parental characteristics predict media use over time, and how early media exposure and use are associated with parent-child relationship quality and children's language development, social-emotional skills, and executive functioning at 24 and 30 months of age.

“The impacts of television on parent-child interaction and young children's development are well documented, but little is known about how newer screen media influence these processes,” Reich said. “This study will be the first to use a longitudinal design and include diverse families, use mother-report, father-report, and observational measures, and explore what, for how long, and with whom young children engage with digital media.”
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Research findings will offer concrete recommendations for promoting healthy media use among infants and toddlers.
​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. Her research interests include child development, parenting, peer interactions, media, and program evaluation with the aim of creating interventions to promote physical and mental health and academic success.