Sarah M Coyne

Biographic Data

ID757887
NAMESarah M Coyne
GIVEN NAMESSarah M
FAMILY NAMECoyne
SIGNATURECOYNE S M
AFFILIATIONSBrigham Young University
ORCID0000-0002-1403-8726
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS133
TOTAL CITATIONS383
AUTHOR COUNT133
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2004
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX11

  • Algorithms and ABCs

    Open AccessM T McClure, Maycee McClure et al.ARTICLEJournal of Children and Media2026

    YouTube usage among young children is highly prevalent, but prior content analyses suggest that YouTube contains substantial amounts of low educational content. We examined associations between parental motivations to use media to educate, child YouTube usage, and educational content of YouTube videos viewed. We also examined associations between educational content of YouTube videos and presence of educational claims in the video title or channe…

  • The youth digital policy repository

    Open AccessSamantha L Vigil, Matthew Shawcroft et al.ARTICLEJournal of Children and Media2026

  • Distracted, Interrupted, or Disrupted

    Open AccessCara S Swit, Sarah M Coyne et al.ARTICLEHuman Behavior and Emerging…2026

    Responsive parent–child interactions fundamentally influence children’s development and socialization. However, smartphones and other digital devices have increasingly interfered in these interactions, leading to a growing interest in technoference—technology‐based interruptions in interpersonal interactions. While researchers often use the terms distraction, interruption, and disruption synonymously, the conceptual distinction between these form…

  • Media emotion regulation and executive functions

    Open AccessJane Shawcroft, Mccall A Booth et al.ARTICLEJournal of Communication2026

    Using media to help children regulate difficult emotions (also called regulatory media use) is a process linked to the development of children’s executive functions. Although a necessary condition for establishing causality, the temporal ordering of the relationship between regulatory media use and executive functions has not been explicitly studied. In this study, we examined individual differences in the temporal ordering of the association bet…

  • Digital pacifiers

    Open AccessChenae Christensen-Duerden, Sarah M Coyne et al.ARTICLEComputers in Human Behavior2026

  • From Likes to Life Satisfaction

    Open AccessSarah M Coyne, Angus M Fraser et al.ARTICLEJournal of Adolescence2026

    INTRODUCTION: Most adolescents engage with social media in some capacity and the majority of research has focused on negative impacts of social media on adolescent development. However, adolescents use social media in ways that might contribute to positive youth development, as described by Lerner's (2012) Positive Youth Development framework. The current study examined the longitudinal associations between positive social media use and positive …

  • Young children’s screen time, executive functions, and language development

    Open AccessChris L Porter, Laura A Stockdale et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2026

    4.0 months) using standardized assessments (e.g., National Institutes of Health Toolbox Cognition Battery) and Kochanska's effortful control/EF tasks (i.e., Snack Delay, Whisper, Day/Night). Higher screen time at age 2 was associated with poorer performance on both hot and cold EF tasks and lower receptive vocabulary at age 4. Parent-child coviewing predicted better working memory, and higher exposure to educational content was linked to stronger…

  • The intersection of Covid lockdown policies and parent resources with children’s media exposure in Canada, the United States, Israel, Sweden, and New Zealand

    Douglas J Piper, Rebecca Cockroft et al.ARTICLEJournal of Children and Media2026

    Government responses to COVID-19 included workplace and childcare closures. Many parents worked from home while caring for preschool children. Media use increased worldwide for adults and young children. This study examined how government responses were linked to family media use by testing whether policy stringency predicted preschool children's screen time and parents' motivations for child media use. Data were analyzed from 2,365 parents of 2-…

  • “I Worked Really Hard to Know Who I Am”

    Open AccessChenae Christensen-Duerden, Sarah M Coyne et al.ARTICLEGenealogy2026

    Although identity development is often framed as a task of adolescence, identity continues to evolve across the life course. Midlife, in particular, involves significant role change, reflection, and meaning-making, yet women’s midlife identity development within religious contexts remains understudied. Using life course and narrative identity frameworks, this qualitative study examined how women navigate identity shifts during midlife within a fa…

  • Chatbots and childhood

    Sarah M Coyne, Jennah Sheffield et al.ARTICLEJournal of Children and Media2026

    The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly common, yet little research has explored its use during childhood. The current study examined two types of AI use (voice assistant and generative AI) and investigated whether such use is associated with problematic media use, as well as internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children. Participants included 474 children (M age = 7.48) and their parents, who completed surveys as…

  • Is screen time associated with children’s physiological regulation? Answers from a 3-year prospective study before and during the Covid-19 pandemic

    Open AccessChris L Porter, Noah A Chojnacki et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2026

    The purpose of this study was twofold, first, to examine potential changes in young children's media use starting a year prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2 years following onset (between 21⁄2 and 41⁄2 years of child age). Second, to examine links between children's screen time and their emerging regulatory functioning as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Participants ( N = 269, 48% female at Wave 3) were drawn from Wav…

  • Disney in Black and White

    Open AccessJessica D Zurcher, Pamela Jo Brubaker et al.ARTICLEJournalism & Mass Communication…2025

    This study examined Disney studios’ portrayals of race as it relates to the physical, mental, and social characteristics of major characters ( N = 319) within Disney animated films released from 1937 to 2021 ( N = 59). Findings revealed most of the characters featured were portrayed as White (68.3%) whereas BIPOC characters made up 31.7% of the total. Results suggest that BIPOC characters were significantly more likely to be featured in supportin…

  • “It’s a window to the outside world. . .” Perspectives From Minority Youth in Aotearoa New Zealand on the Impact of Media and Technology on Their Wellbeing

    Open AccessCara S Swit, Jennifer Smith et al.ARTICLEJournal of Adolescent Research2025

    This study investigated the perspectives of young people aged 12–18 years from minority communities in Aotearoa New Zealand on how media and technology influence their mental health and wellbeing. Adopting a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) approach, we conducted 19 focus groups ( n = 77) with young people from Māori, Pacific, Deaf, or Rainbow (LGBTQIA+) communities. Thematic analysis identified six overarching themes: (1) constant devi…

  • IParenting

    Hailey G Holmgren, Sarah Ashby et al.ARTICLEParenting2025References: 3

  • Stressed out and on screens

    Open AccessSarah M Coyne, Adam A Rogers et al.ARTICLEJournal of Applied Developmental…2025References: 82

  • The social spheres of multiracial teens

    Open AccessEmily J Takamasa, Angus M Fraser et al.ARTICLEJournal of Social and Personal…2025Cited by: 1References: 54

    The number of youth who identify as multiracial has surged in the past decade. However, this population has reportedly suffered high rates of maladaptive behaviors, highlighting the need for research on supports for multiracial youth, including healthy identity development. Using Jackson and Mumma's (2023) model of multiracial identity, this study explored how positive social media use, friendship self-efficacy, and friendship aid related to mult…

  • Have courage and be kind

    Open AccessJane Shawcroft, Mckell A Jorgensen Wells et al.ARTICLEJournal of Communication2024

    Fairytales may represent a unique genre of media well-suited to depict feminine traits as valuable to characters of all genders by positioning traditionally feminine-coded traits as sources of strength and power to characters in fairytale plots. To examine this theoretical supposition, this study examines the association between indices of female empowerment (United States), modern audience ratings of films, and gendered depictions within 31 film…

  • Ariel, Aurora, or Anna? Disney princess body size as a predictor of body esteem and gendered play in early childhood

    Jane Shawcroft, Megan Gale et al.ARTICLEPsychology of Popular Media2024

  • Parents, Princesses, and Powers

    Jane Shawcroft, Sarah M Coyne et al.ARTICLEMedia Psychology2024

    Both princesses and superheroes are highly salient parts of early childhood in the United States. Because of the gendered nature of both princesses and superheroes, it is possible that they represent a salient facet of children’s early gendered environments, and may be associated with other facets of gendered parenting. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to categorize patterns of young children’s engagement with princess and superhero cultures…

  • The growth of problematic media use over early childhood

    Open AccessSarah M Coyne, Jane Shawcroft et al.ARTICLEComputers in Human Behavior2024

  • Patterns of parent media use

    Open AccessHailey G Holmgren, Mccall A Booth et al.ARTICLEComputers in Human Behavior2024

  • Who's most at risk? A person‐centered approach to understanding the long‐term relationship between early social media use and later depression across adolescence

    Open AccessW Justin Dyer, Sarah M Coyne et al.ARTICLEJournal of Adolescence2024

    INTRODUCTION: Person-centered analyses examined the relationship between social media use and depression over an 8-year period. The purpose was to examine the varying ways early social media use was associated with the development of depressive symptoms with a hypothesis that social media would not have a uniform association with depressive symptoms across adolescents. METHODS: Participants included 488 adolescents (52% female), living in the Uni…

  • Links between parent–child conversations about emotions and changes in children's emotion knowledge across early childhood

    Open AccessPeter J Reschke, Brandon N Clifford et al.ARTICLEChild Development2024

    This study examined different sources of emotion socialization. Children (N = 256, 115 girls, 129 boys, 12 child gender not reported) and parents (62% White, 9% Black, 19% Hispanic, 3% Asian American, and 7% “Other”) were recruited from Denver, Colorado. In waves 1 (Mage = 2.45 years, SD = 0.26) and 2 (Mage = 3.51 years, SD = 0.26), parents and children discussed wordless images of children experiencing an emotion (e.g., sad after dropping ice cr…

  • Trajectories of parents' gendered play attitudes during early childhood and implications for children's gender development

    Open AccessAdam A Rogers, Jane Shawcroft et al.ARTICLEChild Development2024

    This study examined associations between parents' gendered attitudes about play and children's gender development. The sample was 501 families from a large US city followed annually for 4 years (501 mothers, 383 fathers; 69% White, 16% Latinx, 8% African American; children M age = 5.67 months, 53% boys). Latent trajectories examined change in parents' attitudes toward same- and other-gender play during first 4 years of the child's life. On a subs…

  • Longitudinal associations between parents' prosocial behavior and media use and young children's prosocial development

    Open AccessLaura M Padilla-Walker, Katey Workman et al.ARTICLEInfancy2024

    Research has found that media is associated with children's prosocial behavior (PB) from an early age, and that parents play a key role in children's media use and behavior. However, few studies explore these relations as early as infancy while also controlling for well‐established predictors of PB (e.g., empathic concern). Thus, the present study examined longitudinal associations between parents' PB and media use, and prosocial development duri…