“Yeah, no more tantrums, whoo!”: Practices parents valued to help children transition away from screens

Objective

To identify practices that were valued by parents in helping their young children to transition away from sedentary screen use.

Study design

This longitudinal trial, in a community setting, involved 13 families, with children aged between 15 and 36 months. Representatives from three service organizations compiled a list of digital resources related to using technology to facilitate children's transition away from sedentary screen use that were suitable to be shared and trialed by parents and young children. During a pre-trial workshop, researchers, participants, and organization representatives collaboratively developed the intervention, which involved the delivery of selected resources by weekly email, over a 12-week period. Participants provided weekly feedback about their experiences and participated in a post-intervention semi-structured qualitative interview. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data from interviews and written feedback.

Results

Participants reported several valued practices to facilitate their children's transition away from sedentary screen use, including those where digital technology provided strategies to assist parents in facilitating transitions, where singing and dancing potentially supported by digital technology were used to facilitate transitions, where digital technology provided ideas for transitions, and where the child's digital technology related interest was used to inspire transitions.

Conclusion

The use of curated resources within a collaborative approach between researchers, service providers and families resulted in several practices families of young children found useful in facilitating transitions away from sedentary screen use.