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Reducing Excessive Screen Time Among Primary School-aged Children Through Caregivers' Parenting Behaviors: A
Qian-Wen Xie1,2, Xu Li Fan1, Roujia Chen3
1Department of Social Welfare and Risk Management, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Objective:
Given the well-documented associations between excessive screen time (ST) and adverse health outcomes, this pilot study aimed to examine the applicability and effectiveness of a multicomponent intervention that combined strategies to enhance caregivers' screen-related parenting practices with efforts to create a supportive community environment to reduce children's ST in a county in China.
Methods:
A 2-arm, cluster-randomized, wait-list controlled design was used. Eight communities and 336 caregivers of primary school-aged children were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and McNemar's χ 2 tests were applied to evaluate within-group changes over time. A linear mixed model was used to assess intervention effects.
Results:
The intervention significantly reduced children's daily average total ST and entertainment ST on weekends (β = -43.81; p < 0.05; β = -22.29, p < 0.05) and on a weekly basis (β = -30.32; p < 0.05; β = -14.40, p < 0.05). Moreover, it significantly reduced the odds of excessive entertainment ST on weekdays (β = -2.32, p < 0.05) weekly (β = -2.34, p < 0.05) and excessive academic ST weekly (β = -1.71, p < 0.05). No significant treatment effect was found for parenting practices and children's physical activities.
Conclusion:
This study supports the feasibility of a multicomponent intervention and its effectiveness in reducing children's excessive ST, particularly in addressing entertainment ST.
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