Temporal Associations Between Parents’ Daily Reports of Media Motivations, Infant Affect, and Parenting Behavior

Past research links media use to infant negative affect, and parents report using media to cope. However, trait-level measures mask within-person effects that reflect mechanisms more directly. In the current study, 401 predominantly White (70.32%), college-educated (88.03%) parents (75.56% mothers) of infants 12 to 24 months old (M=16.43 months, 51.37% boys) completed daily diaries reporting the frequency of parent and child activities, behaviors, and affective states for 21 consecutive days. Temporal network modeling was used to examine associations among parents’ daily reports of infant affect, media motivations, and parenting behavior. On days when infants were fussier than usual, parents reported more frequent yelling and more frequent media use to occupy children, regulate children, and regulate parents’ own emotions the same day, and more media to occupy children the next day. The reverse was not true: Media use did not predict negative affect the next day. On days when parents reported more frequent media use to relax alone and to regulate children than usual, they also reported more frequent comforting the next day, while more frequent media to connect with children one day predicted higher infant positive affect the next day. Again, the reverse was not true. Thus, temporal effects suggest media use may be an adaptive strategy, at least in the short term. Critically, daily within-person effects were not found at the between-person level, underscoring the importance of examining fluctuations within individuals to identify mechanisms and potential intervention targets.