Dylan P. Cliff

Background: It remains unclear how movement behaviour compositions that include screen-based sedentary behaviour (SED) and non-screen-based SED relate to physical development in young children. This study examined associations between a five-component time-use composition, including moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA), light-intensity physical activity (LPA), screen-based SED, non-screen-based SED, and sleep, and key physical development indicators in an international sample of pre-schoolers, and estimated optimal time-use compositions. Methods: Participants were 4,856 pre-schoolers (mean age = 52.6 ± 9.0 months) from the Sleep and Activity Database for the Early Years (SADEY). MVPA, LPA, and total SED were measured using accelerometery, while screen time and sleep were parent-reported. Screen time was operationalised as occurring while sedentary and subtracted from total SED to derive non-screen-based SED. Physical development indicators included body mass index z-score (zBMI), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and locomotor, object control, and overall gross motor skills. Compositional data analysis was used to examine associations, model time reallocations, and estimate optimal time-use compositions. Results: The five-component time-use composition was associated with all physical development indicators except for locomotor skills, explaining small proportions of variance (marginal R ² = 0.01–0.11). Across component time reallocations ranging from − 60 to + 60 min, generally small favourable dose-response associations were observed for reallocations to MVPA (WHtR; diastolic blood pressure; object control skills; overall gross motor skills) and sleep (WHtR; object control skills; overall gross motor skills). Reallocations of screen-based SED showed predominantly null associations, reallocations of non-screen-based SED showed mixed associations, and reallocations of LPA showed generally unfavourable associations. The estimated multidomain optimal composition corresponded to 129 (110–150) min/d of MVPA, 250 (230–270) min/d of LPA, 78 (50–130) min/d of screen-based SED, 389 (330–470) min/d of non-screen-based SED, and 594 (560–640) min/d of sleep. Conclusion: The five-component time-use compositions showed associations, generally small in magnitude, with key physical development indicators in pre-schoolers. Among time-use behaviours, prioritising both MVPA and sleep appears a beneficial strategy for supporting physical development, such as healthy adiposity, blood pressure, and gross motor skills, in this age group.

Objective: This cross‐sectional study examined the role of children's nature exposure within the broader interactional family system associated with children's problematic screen behavior. Background: With screen‐based technology playing an increasingly central role in children's lives, nature exposure provides a promising but understudied family‐level strategy for supporting healthier screen use and relationships. Method: A sample of 334 parents and caregivers (79% female; M = 39.45 years, SD = 5.70) of children aged 5 to 8 years (39% female; M = 6.57 years, SD = 0.99) completed an online survey measuring their nominated child's screen time, problematic screen behavior, temperament, time in nature, and outdoor time without nature, along with assessments of their own parental stress, screen‐time self‐efficacy, and perceived child–parent relationship quality. Results: Nature exposure was negatively correlated with children's problematic screen behavior, independent of screen time and other child‐, parent‐, and family‐level factors. In contrast, no significant correlations were found between these factors and outdoor time without nature. Conclusion: This study highlights the value of moving beyond screen‐limiting strategies toward family‐based approaches that support protective, health‐positive behaviors such as spending time in nature. Implications: This study offers novel considerations for parent‐focused public health messaging and family‐centered approaches to supporting healthy screen use in children. OSF Registration: OSF view‐only link .

Children’s screentime is commonly viewed as passive and problematic. Current focus on reducing the time children spend using digital technologies has meant screentime is quantified often at the expense of considering the quality of children’s digital interactions. These ‘clocking’ practices tend to overlook the potential for children’s digital play to foster movement and relationships with others. Building upon childhood scholarship that has suggested children’s experiences of time are not always linear, nor in line with adults’ expectations, we consider alternative temporalities in relation to children’s screentime. We explore video data from weekly digital playgroups in the Children’s Technology Play Space (CTPS), a living lab for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, focused on movement to highlight that children’s play can intersperse between the digital and the physical, and at times can concurrently be both. As such, we challenge the assumption that screentime is always sedentary. Considering how interactions between children, adults, nonhuman things, and digital technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) enabled varied movement and imagination, we invite conceptions of children’s sedentary screentime to be re-thought.

Background: Understanding the factors influencing 24-hour movement behaviors is important for designing appropriate health promotion strategies. We examined the multidimensional correlates of physical activity, sedentary behavior, screen time, and sleep among children under 5 years of age in Ethiopia. Methods: Cross-sectional study conducted in Adama and Lume district, Ethiopia. Children were recruited from urban kindergartens and rural villages. Physical activity, sedentary time, and sleep were assessed using accelerometry. Screen time and correlates were parent reported. Variables were selected a priori, using the social ecological model and considering country context. Linear mixed models were used to test associations between child-, family-, and community-level correlates and time spent in 24-hour movement behaviors, accounting for clustering effect. Results: Four hundred and thirty children participated (mean age 4.2 [0.6] y). Girls spent less time in total of physical activity (TPA) and moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) and more time sedentary than boys. Children who spent more time outdoors had higher TPA and MVPA, longer sleep duration, and shorter sedentary and screen time. Children of educated parents had lower TPA and MVPA and higher sedentary time than those with no formal education. Children of parents who reported using a screen device with their child for educational purposes spent less time in MVPA, had shorter sleep, and had more screen time than those who did not. Rural children had higher TPA and MVPA, longer sleep, and shorter sedentary and screen time than urban children. Conclusion: We identified key correlates of 24-hour movement behaviors in Ethiopian children. Designing tailored health promotion strategies to support healthy levels of movement behaviors, particularly in urban areas, is needed.

Background: Screen-based devices have become a pervasive feature in the lives of young children. Understanding the ecological influences determining young children’s screen use is imperative for promoting healthy screen habits. While individual studies have examined various factors influencing children’s screen use across the early years, few studies have explored multiple ecological influences simultaneously. This research examines longitudinal associations between children’s home environment, parent management practices and neighbourhood influences on children’s screen time, through 4 to 7 years of age. Methods: Analyses draw on data from 2485 children in the Infant Cohort of a nationally representative sample of children and families participating in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Bivariate and multiple linear regression models were developed to assess contributions of child, parenting, home and neighbourhood variables, measured at 4–5 years, in predicting children’s daily screen time at 6–7 years. Results: Girls had lower screen time than boys at 6–7 years of age. Higher household socio-economic status, child participation in home learning activities and out-of-home extra-curricular activities, parenting consistency, and screen management practices including restricted bedroom access, presence and enforcement of screen rules, and parent-reported ease in managing screen time were also all significant predictors of lower daily screen time at age 6–7 years. Neighbourhood factors including liveability, sense of belonging and area-based socio-economic index were not significant predictors of children’s screen time, after child, parenting and home factors were included in the model. Conclusions: Providing guidance to families about building healthy screen practices from an early age should focus on parenting consistency and management of screen time, as well as responsiveness to engage children in other activities. Home routines on screen use, when consistently managed, can provide young children with opportunities to learn to self-regulate their own screen use behaviours from an early age and build healthy screen time habits.

Despite the vast array of app choices available to children and evidence of a high prevalence of persuasive design features (e.g., rewards, character pressure, and aesthetic manipulation) within these apps, little is known about how, and to what extent, these design elements influence children’s digital app play. The current study investigated the effects of app persuasive design and children’s self‐regulation, and their interaction, on children’s ability to disengage from digital devices. The study adopted a three‐arm acute experimental design, wherein 73 children, aged 3–5 years, were randomly assigned to engage with one of three apps (of high, moderate, or low persuasive design), with a novel “digital disengagement” paradigm that measured the time to disengage from app play and researcher‐rated degree of independent disengagement. Children’s self‐regulation outside of digital contexts was also assessed. General linear models were used to compare the main effects of and interaction between app condition and child self‐regulation on children’s digital disengagement. Given similar disengagement means in high and moderate conditions, these were collapsed and compared with the low condition. Significant interactions between persuasive design (moderate‐high and low) and self‐regulation (high and low) were found for disengagement time and degree of independent disengagement for one of the two self‐regulation measures. Young children with higher self‐regulation were able to disengage from the digital device regardless of persuasive design level (even at moderate‐high levels). Children with lower self‐regulation disengaged more easily and promptly under low persuasive design but took longer and needed more support to disengage when exposed to moderate‐high persuasive design. This first‐of‐its‐kind study offers novel insight into which children are more susceptible to extended digital engagement due to persuasive design. The study highlights the importance of considering the design elements within apps together with the child’s abilities to aid families make more informed digital choices.

Background: Recent research suggests that children spend increasing amounts of time engaging in screen-based activities and less time outdoors in natural environments. There is a growing body of theory-driven literature evidencing that child screen use and exposure to nature are associated with wellbeing outcomes in contrasting ways. However, few studies have explored their combinative effects, and the relational family context has been largely overlooked. Objective: This scoping review explored associations between early-late childhood nature exposure, screen use, and parent-child relations to identify research gaps and inform future research direction. Methods: This review was guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage methodological framework and other relevant guidelines for scoping reviews. A search of five electronic databases (PsycINFO, MEDLINE complete, ERIC, EMBASE, and Cochrane library) was conducted along with additional hand-searches from inception to 9/08/2024. Peer-reviewed articles published in English between 2012 and 2024 were included. Results: A total of 390 articles were screened by title and abstract and full text review of 96 articles was conducted. Following additional searches (hand-search and reference lists), a total of 23 eligible articles were identified. Evidence is presented in tabular and textual form and described using qualitative thematic analysis. The synthesis revealed that the relevant body of research is novel, heterogenous, and fragmented. There are various pathways through which children’s screen use and engagement with nature interact within the family context; however, research exploring their synchronous and bidirectional effects on relational family processes is limited. Conclusion: Findings emphasize the importance of investigating children’s screen use and engagement with nature from a relational paradigm. Future studies should explore the mechanisms underpinning the reciprocal influences of nature and screen use on dyadic family processes and relational outcomes across early-late childhood. OSF registration: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/TFZDV.

Background: Canada, Australia, the World Health Organization and other countries have released 24-hour movement guidelines for the early years which integrate physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep, focusing on supporting children to achieve a healthy 24-hour day. The guideline evidence synthesis, however, highlighted the dearth of high-quality evidence, particularly from large-scale studies. The Sleep and Activity Database for the Early Years (SADEY) project aims to assemble a large, pooled database of 24-hour movement behaviours and health indicators in young children (birth to 5.99 years), to advance knowledge in these areas. This paper describes the SADEY design and methods. Methods: Data sets were identified with > 100 children and device-measured (hip-worn ActiGraph accelerometers) physical activity and sedentary behaviour, parent-reported or device-measured sleep, and at least one health outcome: physical (BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure), social-emotional (Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire), cognitive (Early Years Toolbox), or motor development (Test of Gross Motor Development 2). Led by the University of Wollongong co-ordinating centre, the SADEY project collates the datasets to create a pooled database. Findings: To date, 13 studies from 7 countries have been included in the database. Ethics clearance and data sharing agreements have been secured for all studies and the SADEY 1.0 database is being assembled including ~ 8,000 participants. Discussion: SADEY will be used to address questions of global importance to public health policy and practice, for example – Is the mix of movement behaviours across the 24-hour day associated with healthy development?, What is the optimal mix of these behaviours?, and; What factors can be targeted to support young children in achieving the optimal mix of 24-hour movement behaviours? Additionally, SADEY seeks to develop and disseminate protocols, develop capacity on the device-based measurement of movement behaviours, and seeks partnerships with stakeholders that promote knowledge translation on movement behaviours to support healthy development among young children.

Given the importance of young children’s postures and movements to health and development, robust objective measures are required to provide high-quality evidence. This study aimed to systematically review the available evidence for objective measurement of young (0–5 years) children’s posture and movement using machine learning and other algorithm methods on accelerometer data. From 1663 papers, a total of 20 papers reporting on 18 studies met the inclusion criteria. Papers were quality-assessed and data extracted and synthesised on sample, postures and movements identified, sensors used, model development, and accuracy. A common limitation of studies was a poor description of their sample data, yet over half scored adequate/good on their overall study design quality assessment. There was great diversity in all aspects examined, with evidence of increasing sophistication in approaches used over time. Model accuracy varied greatly, but for a range of postures and movements, models developed on a reasonable-sized (n > 25) sample were able to achieve an accuracy of >80%. Issues related to model development are discussed and implications for future research outlined. The current evidence suggests the rapidly developing field of machine learning has clear potential to enable the collection of high-quality evidence on the postures and movements of young children.

Background Recent research suggests that children spend increasing amounts of time engaging in screen-based activities and less time outdoors in natural environments. There is a growing body of theory-driven literature evidencing that child screen use and exposure to nature are associated with wellbeing outcomes in contrasting ways. However, few studies have explored their combinative effects and the relational family context has been largely overlooked. Objective This scoping review explored associations between early-late childhood nature exposure, screen use, and parent-child relations in order to identify research gaps and inform future research direction. Methods This review was guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage methodological framework and other relevant guidelines for scoping reviews. A search of five electronic databases (PsycINFO, MEDLINE complete, ERIC, EMBASE and Cochrane library) was conducted along with additional hand-searches from inception to 9/06/2023. Peer-reviewed articles published in English between 2012-2023 were included. Results A total of 284 articles were screened by title and abstract and full text review of 79 articles was conducted. Following additional searches (hand-search and reference lists), a total of 16 eligible articles were identified. The synthesis revealed that the relevant body of research is novel, heterogenous, and fragmented. There are various pathways through which children’s screen use and engagement with nature interact within the family context, however research exploring their synchronous and bidirectional effects on relational family processes is limited. Conclusion Findings emphasize the importance of investigating children’s screen use and engagement with nature from a relational paradigm. Future studies should explore the mechanisms underpinning the reciprocal influences of nature and screen use on dyadic family processes and relational outcomes across early-late childhood. OSF Registration DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/TFZDV