Welcome! However you found us, we’re so glad that you’re here. 

This blog started out as a fun idea hatched over late night fries and steak sandwiches at our favorite restaurant. We were both grad students living in Madison, Wisconsin. In those pre-pandemic days, we spent the bulk of our time working with families and running research studies to learn about children’s interactions with digital media. On this specific day, multiple parents had asked us for tips and recommendations about media use for young children. We gave a basic rundown of our advice but had so much more to share than could be explained in a 2-minute conversation. We wanted to find a resource that shared research and recommendations in an approachable way without making parents feel limited or judged, but it didn’t exist. Five years later, we’ve decided to create that resource for you!

After finishing our degrees, and becoming moms ourselves, we recognize now more than ever the need for high-quality, research-based recommendations about screen time for young kiddos. 

So here we are, Dr. Roxanne Etta and Dr. Elizabeth Horgan, otherwise known as Those Media Moms. We both have PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Human Development and Family Studies. Specifically, we research child interactions with, comprehension of, and learning from digital media including television, apps, games, and ebooks. While we’re trained experts on children’s digital media, we also have hands-on knowledge about navigating media use in the real world. Both through our research and as parents of young children, we’ve interacted with thousands of families about healthy media use. We’re excited to share what we know and to learn from you as well along the way. 

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to children’s media use, there are plenty of recommendations, tips, and tricks we learned throughout our years of work. But here’s the thing. We may be experts in the research, but only you are the expert on your own child. That’s why our mission is to equip you with the knowledge to choose and use digital media in a way that fits your family values. The goal is that through this knowledge you can stress less about media use, choose better content to meet your family’s needs, and play more with your child both on and off the screen. We hope that Those Media Moms can serve as an empowering resource to help you stress less, choose better, and play more. 

If you’re excited to learn more about guilt-free screen use, be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to our blog! Stay tuned for exciting things to come.