Alicia Aranyi
Research Mentor(s): Tiffany Munzer
Mentor Department: Pediatrics
Authors: Tiffany Grace-Chung Munzer, Alicia Aranyi
Session: Session 5 (2:00pm – 2:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 1
Abstract
Introduction: Siblings have a significant effect on family dynamics and data has shown that the presence of an older sibling affects their younger sibling directly through interaction and indirectly through influencing how parents choose to raise subsequent children. However, there is little data on how the mother and infant’s phone use are affected by the presence of older siblings.
Aims: To add to this data, we aim to test the hypotheses: 1. Greater number of siblings in the home is associated with greater maternal mobile device use; 2. Greater number of siblings in the home is associated with more pickups or notifications.
Methods: To test these hypotheses, we completed a secondary analysis of data from the Mom and Baby study, an ongoing, longitudinal study of infants from 3-12 months of age and maternal mobile device use. At the time of analysis, 72 participants had complete IOS data at infant age 3 months. We obtained mobile device data by accessing the maternal Screen Time app, which passively collects objective mobile device use information from mothers, including duration of time, pickups, and notifications per day. We collected information about maternal-infant demographics (including number of siblings in the home). We created multivariable ANCOVA analyses examining independent predictors such as siblings, maternal-infant demographics (marital status, parent education, income, childgender, with outcome variables of maternal mobile device use (duration, notifications, pick ups).
Results: Of our infants (n=72), 49.1% of infants were male and 49.1% were female, 50% were only children and 49.9% had siblings. On average, infants had .86 siblings. 89.7% of mothers were married or in serious relationships,10.3% were single. Regarding maternal education, 28.1% of mothers had less than a 2-year college degree and 71.9% had at least a 2-year college degree. Regarding income, 59.6% of households made less than 70,000 dollars a year and 32.8% made between 70,000 and 149,999 dollars.
Analysis: The presence of siblings was not significantly associated with maternal mobile device minutes per day, pickups per day, or notifications per day. Greater maternal mobile device use (minutes per day) was correlated with the greater mobile device pick ups per day (Pearson correlation=.46, p=<.001), greater notifications per day (Pearson correlation = .27, p=.39), and parental education (Pearson correlation= -.31, p=.02). Greater notifications per day was associated with greater pickups per day (Pearson correlation=.49, p=<.001). " Conclusions: Presence of siblings was not associated with maternal mobile device use duration, pickups, or notifications. It may be that the presence of siblings has varying effects and some mothers might use their mobile devices less due to greater in-person life demands while others use their mobile devices more to coordinate for work or other activities between children.
