MEDIA PROTECT: A setting- and parent-targeted intervention for a healthy childhood in the digital age

Screen media usage encompasses a variety of activities including television, DVDs, video games, computers, the internet, smartphones and tablets (Vanderloo, 2014). These activities are playing a progressively integral part in children and young people’s daily lives. In a representative sample of children in the US aged 8 to 10, mean daily screen time was nearly eight hours with different types of media, and more than 11 hours per day for 11- to 18-year-olds (Rideout et al, 2010). Health departments, practitioners and experts recommend that children under the age of three should not be using screen media at all (Strasburger, 2010; Vaala and Hornik, 2014). A maximum of half an hour per day is recommended for children in nursery and of one hour per day for 7- to 12-year-olds (Bitzer et al, 2014). However, national and international studies report an increase in the amount of time children are spending with screen media (Vaala and Hornik, 2014). Excessive use of screen media during childhood is connected with various negative outcomes, for instance, poor school performance (Nunez-Smith et al, 2008; Mößle et al, 2010; Ferguson, 2011), obesity/adiposity (Nunez-Smith et al, 2008; Bener et al, 2011; Staiano et al, 2013), low sleep quality (Cain and Gradisar, 2010; Marino et al, 2016), antisocial behaviour (Robertson et al, 2013), neurological changes (Sigman, 2017), attention problems (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2007; Nunez-Smith et al, 2008; Gentile et al, 2012) and addictive use (Mößle and Rehbein, 2013). For all these outcomes, screen media use has been identified as an independent risk factor in models controlling for other determinants (Mößle, 2012).