Media and Technology

Dr. Megan Moreno, investigator in Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development and adolescent medicine expert at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Today’s teens are the first “digital natives” who have grown up with the internet. So much of what they learn about online safety comes from their peers, but what lessons are they teaching one another? To find out, Dr. Megan Moreno, an investigator in Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development and adolescent medicine expert at Seattle Children’s Hospital, led a study to discover what teens felt were key safety issues and what messages they could be sharing with their peers. She shares her findings here:

Most teens today, including those I see in clinic each week, spend time on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. While these sites provide adolescents with numerous benefits, including social support and exposure to new ideas, there are also risks of internet use, such as cyberbullying and invasion of privacy. Educating adolescents about how to protect their privacy and use the internet safely may prevent many risks. However, there aren’t any widespread, tested and comprehensive resources available to teach these skills to teens because the internet is still a relatively new phenomenon. Most teens say they learn about internet safety from their peers, but it’s unclear what lessons they may be learning in this way.  Our research team led a study to discover what teens felt were key safety issues and what messages they could be sharing with their peers. Read full post »

As new technologies have emerged, Seattle Children’s Research Institute has kept pace, studying various social media channels and considering how these impact adolescent health.

To share their exciting work with the community, the research institute’s Social Media & Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT) is hosting its first annual conference July 31 through Aug. 2. The conference, titled “Using Social Media To Improve Health, Catalyze Research and Empower Communities,” will address how social media can lead to both problematic behaviors – like overuse of the internet – or positive actions, like increased fitness.

“We know social media has some risk but we also know there are some benefits to using these tools,” said Dr. Megan Moreno, principal investigator of SMAHRT within the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s. “We want to figure out how to make online experiences more positive.”

The conference will include panel discussions as well as an “Appy Hour” in which attendees will have a chance to use Fitbit activity trackers, experience iPad health screenings and try an app used to help patients decide on birth control methods. It is intended for teachers, educators, families, health care providers, researchers, child health advocates, public health practitioners, and members of the legal, business, technology, and journalism communities. Read full post »

“You study Facebook?”

Megan Moreno, MD, MPH, often hears a surprised response like this when she describes her work researching adolescent’s use of social media at Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development. But, Moreno no longer has to tell people about her research – she can show it to them. Her team is participating in a video contest and hoping to take their work all the way to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Moreno leads the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT) in its efforts to use social media to reduce health risk behaviors and promote positive lifestyles to adolescents. Read full post »

It is fascinating to watch an infant, who cannot yet talk or walk, play games on a tablet computer. But many parents wonder, should children so young be playing with these devices? Despite previous recommendations that children under age 2 should not use any media, a Seattle Children’s Research Institute expert now says children may benefit from playing with age-appropriate apps for 30 to 60 minutes each day.

In 2011, Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH, was part of a panel of experts who supported a statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) discouraging the use of media by children under 2 years old. But in a new opinion essay, Christakis says that statement should be updated to address new technologies – specifically, the iPad and other tablet computers.

“The AAP statement was in press before iPads existed,” Christakis says. “It treats all screens the same, but there are a lot of theoretical reasons to believe tablet computers are quite different and prior research on traditional media doesn’t apply.”

While he still believes young children should not watch television, Christakis says tablets may be harmless, or even beneficial to infants. Given most parents are ignoring the AAP’s recommendation and 90 percent of children under age 2 watch video screens regularly, Christakis says tablets with interactive apps could be a better alternative. Read full post »

Those three attention-grabbing words can often make parents a bit uneasy when they think about how they relate to their kids. The words are also the title of a new book from Megan Moreno, MD, who heads up the Social Media & Adolescent Health Research Team at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

Moreno is an adolescent medicine specialist at Seattle Children’s and she sees patients on a regular basis. Her aim, based on her research, is that healthy Internet use will one day be discussed in the same way we tell young people to get enough sleep, to drink in moderation and to eat healthy foods. She even sees it as a topic that will be brought up in the doctor’s office one day. Have you had your vaccinations, talked about safe sex and discussed your Facebook and Twitter habits?

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Teens have waning enthusiasm for Facebook, according to the latest “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy” report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “They dislike the increasing number of adults on the site, get annoyed when their Facebook friends share inane details, and are drained by the ‘drama’ that they described as happening frequently on the site,” the report’s authors said.

But these same teens still feel a need to stay on Facebook so that they don’t miss out on anything – a conclusion that is not a surprise to Megan Moreno, MD, who leads the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Moreno and her team’s recently-published Facebook influence study details why young people will still stick with the social networking site, despite it losing a bit of its appeal.

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Differences in parental beliefs and attitudes regarding the effects of media on early childhood development may help explain the increasing racial/ethnic disparities in child media viewing/habits, according to a new study by Wanjiku Njoroge, MD, of Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

The findings support national research that preschool-aged children spend considerable time with media, a situation that brings both risks and benefits for cognitive and behavioral outcomes depending on what is watched and how it is watched. A 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation media study, for example, highlighted that ethnically/racially diverse children—specifically African American, Hispanic and Asian children—watch more television than non-Hispanic white children. Read full post »

A team of our (smart) researchers from SMAHRT descended on Washington, D.C. last weekend for the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. SMAHRT = Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, which is based at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. This week, we’ll feature some of their new research. Megan Moreno, MD, leads the group and is a senior author on all of the research studies. Some of the researchers are based at other academic institutions, demonstrating the collaborative spirit of SMAHRT.

As a researcher who is barely out of college myself, it’s interesting when I run focus groups with college students to ask them their opinions about Internet use, because I often share the same views. So when we asked college students what they think about younger generations using social media, their answers weren’t all that surprising to me. Basically, like many parents and pediatricians, college students are worried about the effects of early social media use.

As we all know, the use of social media is widespread and increasing in use among all age groups. While social media provides teenagers and young adults many benefits, including improving communication skills, being able to network with friends and family and staying informed about local and world news, it can also have risks, such as exposure to content that might not be age appropriate, cyberbullying, and even sexting (sending sexually explicit texts or pictures).

In order to gain a unique perspective on this issue, we asked college students to share their thoughts about the potential effects that social media may have on younger adolescents. We chose this population because college students are heavy users of social media and because the current generation of college students did not begin using social media until they were slightly older. We thought this would give them an interesting outlook on how it affects the generation below them.

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A team of our (smart) researchers from SMAHRT descended on Washington, D.C. last weekend for the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. SMAHRT = Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, which is based at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. This week, we’ll feature some of their new research. Megan Moreno, MD, leads the group and is a senior author on all of the research studies. Some of the researchers are based at other academic institutions, demonstrating the collaborative spirit of SMAHRT.

There are two predictions that are a near sure bet when discussing the daily lives of college students. First, Facebook is an omnipresent social tool for this age group. Nearly all students use it, and it has become an important part of how they form friendships.

Second, as you’ve read in other SMAHRT posts this week, alcohol is a big part of collegiate life, to the extent that binge drinking and other dangerous drinking behaviors are often seen as normal. Taking these two factors into account, a related phenomenon is that students often post about alcohol on Facebook.

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A team of our (smart) researchers from SMAHRT descended on Washington, D.C. last weekend for the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. SMAHRT = Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, which is based at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. This week, we’ll feature some of their new research. Megan Moreno, MD, leads the group and is a senior author on all of the research studies. Some of the researchers are based at other academic institutions, demonstrating the collaborative spirit of SMAHRT.

Drinking is a common activity among college students, and excessive alcohol consumption has negative consequences such as unintentional injuries and assault. College freshmen are an interesting group to observe from a research angle, as heavy drinking increases significantly from pre-college to the first semester of college.

Why do college freshmen start to drink?

Most freshmen are on their own for the first time, with increased freedom and independence. They want to fit in with new friends who drink, or they may turn to alcohol to cope with stressful situations in a new environment. Students who were heavy drinkers in high school have been found to be especially at risk in college for heavy drinking and experiencing related negative consequences.

What happens to those students who enter college planning to refrain from drinking? Do they stay away from alcohol as they had planned, or do they give in to peer pressure and change their minds about drinking? If so, do they drink heavily or just socially?

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