Family-Based Strategies for Healthy Screen Use and the Role of Motivational Interviewing.

Nearly all American adolescents own a smartphone. Smartphones facilitate access to "apps" that are commonly used by adolescents to communicate with peers. Gender differences show a preference for social media (SM) use in girls and gaming in boys, but digital media use (DMU) has increased across genders. Adolescents are now online "almost constantly" at rates that have doubled in the last decade. For most, it would be hard to give up their use.1 When spending time online, adolescents most frequently have continuous contact with close friends,2 suggesting that giving up DMU individually, in an environment of almost universal use, would be difficult.