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O'Connor Lab TECH Study

Examining the Impact of Screen Media Use on Preschooler’s Sleep, Executive Function, and Weight Status

Screen media use includes the time children watch TV, use digital tablets (such as iPads), use smart phones and computers/laptops, or play on videogame consoles. Children use devices for many reasons such as for entertainment or learning. Much of what we currently know about young children’s screen media use is from studies where parents reported how much time their child typically spent on a device. But, since children now have increased access to many different screen devices, it can be difficult for parents to track all their screen use. The TECH study is investigating the impact of screen media use on children’s sleep, growth, problem solving, learning, and memory over a 12-month period. By using new technology to track the time of day and duration of children’s screen use, the goal of the TECH study is to show how children’s passively measured screen use is related to children’s health and development outcomes.

The TECH study is possible due to research conducted by Dr. O’Connor’s lab and colleagues at Rice University who collaboratively developed the FLASH-TV system to passively track children’s TV viewing in their home. 

FLASH Project Image
The image illustrates the process of the FLASH-TV System. The participants are recorded watching TV to measure the estimate total time the target child views the screen. Computer vision and machine learning algorithms analyze each frame of the recorded video in three stages: 1) face detection, 2) face verification and 3) gaze estimation

You can learn more about FLASH and other approaches to measuring children’s use in these publications:

  • Kumar Vadathya A, Baranowski T, O’Connor TM, Beltran A, Musaad SM, Perez O, Mendoza JA, Hughes SO, Veeraraghavan A. Development of Family Level Assessment of Screen use in the Home for Television (FLASH-TV). Multimedia Tools and Applications. 2024; [Epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1007/s11042-023-17852-y.c.
  • Perez O, Garza T, Hindera O, Beltran A, Musaad SM, Dibbs T, Singh A, Chug S, Sisson A, Kumar Vadathya A, Baranowski T, O'Connor TM. Validated assessment tools for screen media use: A systematic review. PLoS One. 2023; 18(4):e0283714.
  • Perez O, Kumar Vadathya A, Beltran A, Barnett RM, Hindera O, Garza T, Musaad SM, Baranowski T, Hughes SO, Mendoza JA, Sabharwal A, Veeraraghavan A, O’Connor TM. The Family Level Assessment of Screen Use-Mobile approach: Development of an approach to measure children’s mobile device use. JMIR Formative Research. 2022; 6(10):e40452
  • Kumar Vadathya A, Musaad S, Beltran A, Perez O, Meister L, Baranowski T, Hughes SO, Mendoza JA, Sabharwal A, Veeraraghavan A, O’Connor TM. An objective system for quantitative assessment of TV viewing among children (Family Level Assessment of Screen use in the Home-Television): System development study. JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting. 2022; 5(1):e33569.

If you have any questions, email us at screentimesleep@bcm.edu, call us at 713-798-0388, or text us at 346-660-2333.

Funding for FLASH from NIDDK (R01-DK113269) and TECH from NICHD (1P01HD109876).