BOSTON , March 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Boston Children’s Hospital at this time introduced the launch of the Digital Wellness Lab, a first-of-its-kind analysis and innovation incubator bringing collectively science-based options and details about the consequences of digital know-how on our brains, our bodies, and behaviors. With an enormous enhance within the variety of children spending greater than six hours on-line each day, and unknowns looming across the worsening psychological well being and wellbeing of youngsters and households, research-based options are wanted greater than ever.
An evolution of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital, the first pediatric educating affiliate of Harvard Medical School , the Digital Wellness Lab launched its 2021 Family Digital Wellness Guide . This complete, research-based useful resource was created to handle mother and father’ and caregivers’ considerations, to make clear confusion, and to empower households to be actively concerned of their youngsters’s digital lives at each stage of growth. The Digital Wellness Lab carried out a pulse survey to measure how the pandemic lockdown 12 months has affected children’, mother and father’ and households’ digital behaviors and wellness. The outcomes of this nationwide survey, additionally launched in a report today , will serve to information the Lab’s efforts in its inaugural 12 months.
Equally vital to the work the Lab does day by day to seek out solutions and assist youngsters and households in want, the longer-term objective is to be a central hub the place analysis findings could be aggregated, translated into sensible suggestions, and shared, not simply in well being care, however among the many main educating, know-how and leisure platforms the place youngsters are spending the vast majority of their waking hours.
“The cacophony of opposing opinions on digital use and the influence of screens on youngsters usually leaves us confused, overwhelmed and cautious,” mentioned Boston Children’s Hospital’s Michael Rich , MD, MPH , founding father of the Digital Wellness Lab and affiliate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School . “We want one thing higher than opinions. The Digital Wellness Lab is a hub for unbiased, scientific analysis and instruments at your fingertips that folks, and all customers, want now. This data will permit us to synergize moderately than criticize, working along with know-how innovators and content material creators to construct a digital atmosphere that promotes particular person and societal wellness.”
The Digital Wellness Lab brings collectively international innovators, thought leaders, and supporters from know-how to public well being, neuroscience to leisure, psychology to coverage making. Together, they’re creating the system mandatory to provide and maintain a steady stream of science-based data centered on the digital wellness of people and society by:
- Researching how the interactive media applied sciences we use and the best way we use them have an effect on human growth and our bodily, psychological and social well being.
- Educating and empowering supporters, from youngsters and mother and father to tech innovators, content material producers to clinicians, educators to policymakers, with evidence-based steerage, residing methods, instruments, and finest practices for media and know-how use that promote wellness and wholesome human growth.
- Understanding, characterizing, stopping and treating media use-related problems, creating scientific protocols to acknowledge and reply to problematic interactive media use, creating instruments for educators, and recommending methods for mother and father caring for youngsters in a digital age.
- Innovating in synergy with know-how builders, content material creators and educators to form a digital atmosphere that helps the wellness of youngsters, adolescents and adults.
“We all want to start out serious about how our behaviors with digital gadgets have an effect on our bodily and psychological well being,” mentioned Kristelle Lavallee , Senior Content Strategist on the Digital Wellness Lab. “Digital wellness must be addressed as a crucial a part of total well being and wellbeing in at this time’s world.”
Digital Wellness Lab supporters embody: Age of Learning, The Alberta Teachers’ Association, Alpha Edison , Amazon Kids, Facebook, Facebook Reality Labs, The mixed group of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Instagram, Noggin, Optum, Roblox, Ruderman Family Foundation, Sesame Workshop, TikTok, Trend Micro and Walt Disney Television.
For sources, go to the Digital Wellness Lab at digitalwellnesslab.org
ABOUT BOSTON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Boston Children’s Hospital is ranked the #1 children’s hospital within the nation by U.S. News & World Report and the first pediatric educating affiliate of Harvard Medical School . Home to the world’s largest analysis enterprise primarily based at a pediatric medical middle, its discoveries have benefited each youngsters and adults since 1869. Today, 3,000 researchers and scientific employees, together with 9 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 21 members of the National Academy of Medicine and 12 Howard Hughes Medical Investigators comprise Boston Children’s analysis neighborhood. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for youngsters, Boston Children’s is now a 415-bed complete middle for pediatric and adolescent well being care. For extra, go to our Discoveries weblog and observe us on social media @BostonChildrens , @BCH_Innovation , Facebook and YouTube .
Contact:
Erin Tornatore , Boston Children’s Hospital
617-919-3110
erin.tornatore@childrens.harvard.edu
Jynelle Herbert , Boston Children’s Trust
617-355-6269
jynelle.herbert@chtrust.org
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SOURCE Boston Children’s Hospital
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