Adolescent Behavior, Family Relations, Gaming Disorder, Social Media Addiction
Conditions
Brief summary
The Family-Centered Program for Problematic Gaming and Excessive Screen Use (FAME) is a pioneering initiative designed to address the growing challenges of excessive screen use and gaming among children and adolescents, particularly within family dynamics.
Detailed description
The Family-Centered Program for Problematic Gaming and Excessive Screen Use (FAME) is a pioneering initiative designed to address the growing challenges of excessive screen use and gaming among children and adolescents, particularly within family dynamics. With digital media becoming one of the most prevalent leisure activities, excessive use has been linked to adverse outcomes, including depression, sleep disturbances, and family conflicts. Despite these concerns, there are no evaluated family-centered interventions in Sweden that address these issues comprehensively. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) aims to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of the S-FAME program, developed in collaboration with social services across two municipalities (Lund, Eslöv). The program integrates psychoeducation, cognitive restructuring, and social-emotional learning, focusing on both children and their families. It acknowledges that problematic screen use often develops within family contexts and aims to improve parenting practices and enhance parent-child relationships. The project aligns with the new Social Services Act, which will come into effect in July 2025, emphasizing easily accessible, preventive, and low-threshold interventions-so-called non-means-tested services. By targeting both individual and family needs, the intervention has the potential to reduce societal costs, enhance family well-being, and address health inequalities. With its innovative and scalable design, S-FAME provides a much-needed framework to tackle one of today's most pressing challenges in youth development- excessive screen use. We are a team of researchers with great experience in research as well as clinical work in the field of adolescence, social work and ANDTS (Alkohol, narkotika, droger, tobak och spel). The project is well established within the School of Social Sciences/Medical Faculty at Lund University, as well as within the innovation and development departments of two social services units. PI Emma Claesdotter-Knutsson (ECK), associate professor and senior consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry at Lund University/Region Skåne with major research areas of gaming, gambling and screens use. ECK has extensive clinical expertise and has played a key role at the Swedish Public Health Agency, contributing to the development of recommendations on child digital media use. PI ECK brings extensive experience and formal training in leading collaborative projects.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALFamily-centered Program for Problematic Gaming/Excessive Screen Use in a child and adolescent population within Social Services
The critical components include psychoeducation, cognitive restructuring, and social and emotional learning.his would be the first intervention offering help for both children and their parents. Such an intervention could be beneficial not only to individual families, but also to society at large by reducing societal costs, enhancing family well-being, and addressing health inequalities . the intervention is agroup intervention in 4 sessions with parents in one group and children in one group. The goals are to help children and parents understand the positive and negative aspects of screen use and to prevent related problems and family conflicts. T
BEHAVIORALControl
This group will recieve TAU == treat ment as usual depending on the practice at the Social service they belong to
Sponsors
Region Skane
Lund University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE (Subject)
Intervention model description
This study is a 2-arm, parallel-group randomized controlled trial (RCT). Social services in three municipalities (Lund, Eslöv) have endorsed the project and provided each a letter of intent. Families seeking help for conflicts related to child digital media use will be invited to participate. Eligible families will be randomly assigned to either the intervention group, receiving the S-FAME program, or the control group, receiving standard care. These groups will be matched based on specific preexisting characteristics. Based on power analyses appx 176 participants will be required to detect a small effect size (d = .03), accounting for potential attrition.
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
11 Years to 14 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* family conflicts related to screen use * spaeks and udnerstand swedish
Exclusion criteria
* se above
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| FCU | Baseline; Post treatment; 1 month post treatment | five items measure parent-child warmth, and three items measure parent-child conflicts |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SCREENS-Q (adapted) time (19) • PARCA for assessing aspects of parent-child relationship and parenting practices (22) • FCU five items measure parent-child warmth, and three items measure parent-child conflicts (23) | Baseline; Post treatment; 1 month post treatment | screening form, for valuing children and adolescent´s screen time screening form, for valuing children and adolescent´s screen time screening form, for valuing children and adolescent´s screen time |
| PARCA | Baseline; Post treatment; 1 month post treatment | for assessing aspects of parent-child relationship and parenting practices |
Countries
Sweden
Contacts
CONTACTEmma Claesdotter-Knutsson, PhD
CONTACTSabina Kapetanovic, PhD
Outcome results
None listed