Media and Technology

“Before COVID-19 restrictions, patients facing surgery were given the opportunity to tour the hospital with their families ahead of time to help ease the nerves and to become comfortable with the process. Since that option became unavailable, Dr.  Henry Ou took it upon himself to create a virtual tour that a kid can walk through on Minecraft! In their world! It is very impressive, and you can tell he has spent a lot of time and effort perfecting it for the kiddos.” — Mariette Broncheau, partner employee — Research

As a self-described “kid at heart,” Dr. Henry Ou said he’s got a good sense for how patients may be feeling, including what they’re interested in and which situations may be scary for them. When the pandemic struck and hospital visitation had to be limited, Ou used his kid-like perspective to accomplish a task very different than his usual surgical case — creating a Minecraft version of the hospital.

Minecraft is a video game that allows players to virtually explore a 3D world with different terrain and environments to accomplish various tasks or missions — a virtual LEGO world of sorts. Over the past 18 months, Dr. Ou has taken thousands of videos and photographs around the hospital and spent hundreds of hours during his personal time designing a Minecraft version of the hospital building.

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The latest screen-time related research from Dr. Pooja Tandon, a child health and development expert at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, was inspired by her oldest son.

“When my son entered middle school, I learned that students in many middle and high schools were allowed to have their phones with them at all times,” Tandon said. “I looked into this a bit more and found that even in schools where policies limited use during class, cell phones could still be used unrestricted during lunch and recess.”

This struck Tandon, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, whose research focuses on promoting healthy active and outdoor play for children and teens.

“My fellow pediatricians and I follow guidelines that recommend children and teens enjoy two hours of age-appropriate recreational screen time a day,” she said. “Yet, many children may be spending most of their waking hours in school with what could be unsupervised and unrestricted access to their phones.” Read full post »

Physical activity may be one way for teen cancer survivors to reduce their risk of several chronic conditions. A team led by researchers at Seattle Children’s recently tested the practicality of using a Fitbit Flex and Facebook to help encourage physical activity among survivors.

The battle against cancer continues well after remission for many adolescents and young adults. Cancer survivors are at increased risk to develop chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and second cancers.

Physical activity can be an important factor to help lower the risk of developing these conditions while providing an increased quality of life among survivors. However, many studies have shown that cancer survivors maintain a lower level of physical activity than their peers.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Jason Mendoza at Seattle Children’s Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development and Dr. Eric Chow at Seattle Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center recently tested the feasibility of a mobile health intervention aimed at encouraging increased physical activity among teen cancer survivors. The team tapped into wearable fitness technology, the Fitbit Flex, social media and self-determination theory (SDT) to develop an approach that meets teen cancer survivors where they’re at. Read full post »

The story of John Kahan and his wife, Heather, losing their son Aaron to SIDS 13 years ago inspired his colleagues at Microsoft to develop a data analysis tool for SIDS research, which they have donated to Seattle Children’s Research Institute. (Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

John Kahan manages a team of renowned Microsoft data scientists who are changing how society can use data effectively, from deciding when to plant crops to creating predictive business models.

But when he’s not at work, Kahan commits his time to a personal mission: Raising awareness about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and fundraising for research. John and Heather Kahan lost their baby boy, Aaron, to SIDS shortly after his birth 13 years ago.

When Kahan’s data science team learned about Aaron, they volunteered to apply Microsoft technology to SIDS data and donate the company’s emerging tech tools to Seattle Children’s researchers who study SIDS.

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The New Year is a time to look forward and consider making changes to improve health, wellness and overall happiness. Typical resolutions revolve around being more physically active, eating better, spending quality time with loved ones and breaking bad habits. Dr. Megan Moreno, adolescent medicine specialist and a researcher at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, offers an idea that can help parents and teens free up time to focus on those resolutions or can be a worthy resolution of its own – a social media detox.

“A social media detox is a period of time in which a person steps away from using social media and reflects on the positives and negatives of being connected via social networks,” said Moreno. “Changing up your family’s social media use in the New Year can benefit you in many ways, from freeing up time for making healthy lifestyle changes, to improving your outlook on life.” Read full post »

New media policies from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend creating customized plans for your family’s media use.

In our digital age, it’s not uncommon to see a toddler on an iPad at the airport or a teenager at the mall fixated on a smartphone. To help families establish healthy habits for media use, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new media and screen time policies for children, from infants to teenagers.

The two new policies update previous recommendations and emphasize the importance of critical health behaviors such as sleep, cognitive development and physical activity. The policies recommend those daily priorities be addressed first, followed by mindful selection and engagement with media. Read full post »

A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics calls for action to reduce children’s exposure to violent video games and media. The report also calls on the gaming and media industries to create shows and games for children that do not contain violence.

“Children are not only viewing violence, but with virtual reality games they are actively engaging in a realistic and immersive violent experience,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and lead author of the new AAP policy. “A media diet is as important as a food diet. Pediatricians and families need to have thoughtful conversations about a child’s media intake.” Read full post »

A new report on bullying describes its effects on childhood development and calls for better monitoring and understanding of cyberbullying.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine describes the effects of bullying on childhood development and calls for a better understanding of cyberbullying. Dr. Frederick Rivara, Seattle Children’s Guild Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, chaired the report committee, and Dr. Megan Moreno, principal investigator of the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, was a committee member. On the Pulse sat down with them to discuss the new findings and what families can do to protect their children from bullying.

What new information or findings does this report offer about bullying? What are the key takeaways?

Moreno: While bullying has been around for decades, there are many misconceptions about bullying. This report describes and synthesizes the current scientific evidence so that we can have a shared understanding of the current state of the science on bullying.

The first takeaway is that bullying experiences can lead to biological changes for the target of bullying, including stress response and brain activity alterations. Read full post »

A study by Dr. Megan Moreno found that 76% of the college students displayed alcohol references on Facebook, compared to just 34% who posted about alcohol on Twitter.

It’s spring break season, and that means many college students across the country will shift their focus from the classroom to having fun. Sometimes those spring break plans can include attending parties where alcohol is present, which can lead to concerning and excessive alcohol consumption. In fact, alcohol is the most commonly used substance by college students, and rates of problematic drinking are higher among college students than compared to their non-college peers.

A new study by Dr. Megan Moreno from Seattle Children’s Research Institute in the Journal of Adolescent Health shows that college students are more than twice as likely to post about alcohol on Facebook than on Twitter.

The study provides researchers, school administrators and parents with valuable information on how to study and monitor social media for concerning alcohol consumption.

“This work illuminates new approaches for social media researchers and can help us understand where young people post different types of social media content,” said Moreno. Read full post »

Dr. Megan Moreno found that teens posting about self-harm, which includes behavior such as intentional cuts or burns on the wrists, arms, legs or belly, were able to outmaneuver Instagram warning labels.

Teens on social media post about their comings and goings—pictures, videos, music and news. But according to a new study from Seattle Children’s Research Institute, some teens are using stealthy hashtags and secret languages on Instagram, a popular picture-sharing app, to create online self-harm communities and trends that encourage dangerous behavior. By doing so, they circumvent Instagram safeguards for self-harm and other dangerous material.

The new research illustrates what content is present on Instagram and details how parents or concerned adults can decipher the meaning of unclear terms they see on their teens’ profiles.

Dr. Megan Moreno, an adolescent medicine physician who studies social media and adolescent health at the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, found that teens posting about self-harm, which includes behavior such as intentional cuts or burns on the wrists, arms, legs or belly, were able to outmaneuver Instagram warning labels. Despite the social media app’s attempts to discourage the posts by providing warnings and blocking certain hashtags, adolescent users continued the conversations by developing new hashtags.

“We found that only one third of self-harm hashtags on Instagram generated warning labels,” Moreno said. “Adolescents’ use of unusual terms, such as ‘blithe’ and odd spellings such as ‘self-harmmm,’ allowed them to subvert detection and warning labels.” Read full post »