“Technoference”, or how screen time affects your parenting.

[By Penny Bounia-Mastrogianni]

Spoiler Alert: Not positively.

Children’s screen time has been extensively researched during the previous two decades, and it has often been implicated in many undesirable psychological and educational outcomes. For a change, I decided to write some thoughts and relevant findings focusing on the effects that smartphones’ usage – and technology in a wider sense – has on parental behaviour instead. Welcome to my short guilt trip. Don’t worry, you are not alone.

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Home (not) alone – how did children deal with quarantine?

[By: Penny Bounia-Mastrogianni] 

For some of us MOTION early-stage researchers, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by moving back to our home countries in a rush and under great uncertainty. I decided to return to Greece and to my family, where, by interacting with my very young sister and other families with children, I realized how many children and adolescents probably had a much harder time mentally coping with the situation than us adults. So I decided to write some thoughts on this challenging reality that many parents and caregivers faced and keep facing.

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