Temporal associations between parents' daily reports of media motivations, infant affect, and parenting behavior

Past research links media use to infant negative affect, and parents report using media to cope. However, trait-level measures mask within-person effects that reflect regulatory and relational mechanisms more directly. In this study, 401 predominantly White (70.32%), college-educated (88.28%) parents (75.31% mothers) of 12- to 24-month-olds (M_age = 16.43, 51.37% boys) completed daily diaries reporting the frequency of parent and child behaviors and affective states for 21 consecutive days. Temporal network modeling was used to examine associations among parents' daily reports of media motivations, infant affect, and parenting behavior. On days when infants were fussier than usual, parents reported more yelling and more media use to occupy children, regulate children, and regulate parents' own emotions the same day and more media to occupy children the next day. The reverse was not true: Media use did not predict negative affect the next day. On days when parents reported more frequent media use to relax alone and to regulate children than usual, they also reported more comforting the next day, while more frequent media to connect with children on a given day predicted more infant positive affect the next day. Again, the reverse was not true. Results differed little as a function of infant age. Thus, temporal effects suggest media use may be an adaptive short-term strategy across the second year of life. Critically, within-person effects were not found at the between-person level, underscoring the importance of examining fluctuations within individuals to identify mechanisms and potential intervention targets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).