About

Stephanie Reich is a community psychologist studying contexts that support children’s development. Her research focuses on children’s direct and technologically mediated interactions with family, peers, and educational settings. She is affiliated with the Connected Learning Lab and contributes to understanding how various environments influence children's growth and learning.

Research topics

• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Bidirectional relationships of parenting stress, media use for behavior management, and children’s behavior problems from 9 to 30 months.

  Developmental Psychology · 2026-03-09

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As digital devices permeate the environments of young children, there is growing concern that media use might be displacing very young children's opportunities to cultivate important developmental skills, such as controlling their emotions and behaviors. Further, given the power of devices to capture children's attention, even when emotionally upset, parents might utilize media to both calm and distract their children, even when such use is counter to professional recommendations for very young children's media use. This study uses data from a longitudinal bilingual (English/Spanish) parenting intervention to assess how mothers' and fathers' parenting stress might be reciprocally related to their use of media to calm or distract their child from infancy to toddlerhood and how such use might be linked to young children's behavior problems from 9 to 30 months. Importantly, bidirectional relationships between the device use for behavior management and children's behavior problems are also considered. With a sample of 419 low-to-moderate income, ethnically diverse parents (210 families), we found that for mothers, parenting stress, device use to calm and distract, and children's behavior problems were reciprocally related over time. These within-subject effects indicate that the relationship between these constructs varies within mother-child dyads. For fathers, only between-subject effects were found for device use to calm and distract and children's behavior problems, indicating differences between fathers in their use of media. Such findings underscore the need to include both mothers and fathers in media research and to consider both parent and child contributions to media use and developmental processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• One (Adult) Size Does Not Fit All: The Importance of Development in Digital Design and Utilization

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2026-04-14

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Pediatric Emergency Medicine Providers' Experience with Digitally Mediated Sexual Content and Abuse: An Exploratory Survey (Preprint)

  2026-01-13

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> Digital devices and online platforms are a ubiquitous part of childhood and adolescence, and offer both opportunities and risks. One of those risks is digital sexual exposure and abuse, which emerging research finds to be highly prevalent. Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) providers are first responders, mandated reporters and trusted professionals, but how knowledgeable and prepared they are to address these issues is their practice is unknown. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> To assess the familiarity, experiences, and concerns of PEM providers in the U.S with identifying and supporting victims of digital sexual abuse in their clinical practice. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> PEM providers (n=286), recruited through a PEM listserv, were surveyed anonymously about how often patients and/or their parents shared concerns about digitally-mediated sexual content or abuse, to what extent presentations of suicidal ideation/attempts were related to digitally-mediated sexual abuse, provider familiarity with different types of digital sexual content and abuse, what resources providers used to support patients, and what additional information or supports they felt were needed to address these topics in their clinical practice. </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> Though respondents were familiar with some terms (e.g., sexting, cyberbullying related to sexual images), less than 1 in 5 respondents reported feeling prepared to address sextortion, cyberflashing, or porn addiction. More than 20% of providers reported seeing digital-mediated sexual abuse in their clinical practice monthly or more often, though many reported not asking or screening for these types of abuse. Almost 2/3 of respondents had had patients with suicidal ideation or attempt that was associated with non-consensual image sharing and/or cyberbullying around sexual images. Providers used hospital social work and psychological services to support patients but wanted more education on screening and treating, more resources for families, and greater support from K-12 settings for families. </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> Though based on a convenience sample drawn from the largest PEM listserv, findings indicate the need for more educational resources, updated screening tools, reporting mechanisms, and family-accessible resources for addressing digitally-mediated sexual exposure and abuse among pediatric patients. </sec>

  PublisherDOI

• The effectiveness of participatory near-peer digital media literacy interventions

  Educational Psychology · 2026-03-20 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Towards Developmentally Informed School Climate Research

  Contemporary School Psychology · 2025-10-03 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract School climate is a well-researched area, with decades of empirical studies underscoring its importance for students across life stages. Similarly, a wealth of developmental research on stage-environment fit theory has shown how the demands of an environment intersect with developmental needs and capacities. However, these two topics are insufficiently linked, limiting our understanding of how school climate could and should be developmentally informed. This integrative review of 140 articles tries to bridge this gap by connecting research in these two areas. We focus on the main categories of school climate: safety, relationships, teaching and learning, and the institutional environment, and use early adolescence (middle school) as a sample stage. We then link key needs of this developmental period: autonomy, identity development, and intimacy, and consider how the four components of school climate could better support these three developmental needs, to create a better stage-(school)environment fit. By framing school climate components around the specific needs and capacities of young adolescents, we identify ways in which middle school environments, from physical safety to interpersonal relationships, could be more developmentally-informed. This, in turn, can advance the field of school climate, to more explicitly consider developmental stage, and help produce school climates that better support healthy development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mothers’ and fathers’ emotion socialization: Longitudinal relations with toddlers’ social competence

  Infant Behavior and Development · 2025-02-19 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Understanding the Impact of Social Media on Adolescent Wellbeing

  Childhood Education · 2025-01-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Author Correction: Parental Monitoring of Early Adolescent Social Technology Use in the US: A Mixed-Method Study

  Journal of Child and Family Studies · 2025-07-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Maternal and Paternal Sensitive Parenting at 9 Months and Children’s Socioemotional Competence and Executive Function at Age 3

  Parenting · 2025-10-16

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Qualitative Study of U.S. Latino Fathers’ Perceptions of Parenting Motivations

  Journal of Child and Family Studies · 2025-12-08

  articleOpen access

  Though ample research and theory suggest that parents’ beliefs and cognitions are important predictors of their parenting behaviors, there is little understanding of Latino fathers’ perceived parenting motivations. We explored resident, first-time fathers’ motivations to be involved parents in a sample (N = 85) of socioeconomically diverse Latino fathers participating in a parenting intervention in the Washington D.C. area and southern California. Data were collected through structured interviews that were recorded during home visits when infants were 18-months old. Bilingual research assistants transcribed and translated into English fathers’ responses to the interview question, “What makes you want to be a good parent?” A thematic analysis revealed five main emergent themes: (1) personal rearing history, (2) desire to rear a well-adjusted child, (3) relationship with their child, (4) intrinsic motivations, and (5) sense of duty and responsibility. We further explored whether fathers’ perceived parenting motivations varied by their nativity status (i.e., U.S.-born or immigrant). We found variations in each of the themes, including that immigrant Latino fathers were more likely to prioritize their children’s morals and values, whereas U.S.-born Latino fathers emphasized their child’s future success. This study contributes to the limited research on Latino fathers’ parenting perceptions and beliefs. The findings can be used to inform programs geared at strengthening Latine family functioning in the face of adversity through leveraging the reasons behind why fathers want to be positively involved with their young children. This study used thematic analysis to explore the perceived parenting motivations of 85 first-time Latino fathers living in the U.S. We also explored variation in fathers’ parenting motivations by their nativity status (i.e., U.S.-born vs. immigrant). We identified five main themes, and various subthemes, in fathers’ perceived motivations, as well as differences by nativity status. The findings may inform parenting interventions, given the influence of fathers’ motivations on parenting behaviors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• BB2: Using Baby Books to Improve Maternal and Paternal Parenting and Child Outcomes

  NIH · $3.1M · 2020–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Natasha Cabrera

  14 shared

• Joanna C. Yau

  University of Southern California

  13 shared

• Melissa Dahlin

  Center for Health and Gender Equity

  7 shared

• Melissa N. Callaghan

  Harvard University

  6 shared

• Wendy Ochoa

  6 shared

• Mark Warschauer

  6 shared

• Rebecca W. Black

  University of California, Irvine

  6 shared

• Guadalupe Díaz

  California State University, Fullerton

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology and Human Development

  Vanderbilt University

  2006

• M.S., Psychology and Human Development

  Vanderbilt University

  2001

• B.A., Psychology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1996