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Screen media occupy an increasing role in young children's play and learning environments. This paper advances the current discussion of the changing digital lives of children, with new insights of media use in the homes of Australian families (N = 406). Parents reported their child's technology ownership, engagement with traditional and new media, joint media engagement, as well as children's preferences and quantity of media use. From 2014 to 2017, cross‐sectional data were collected via media use questionnaire from families with a child 8 years of age or younger. Of all the media activities, children most frequently participated in reading (paper‐based or eBooks) and watching television. Children's touchscreen use indicated a variety of choices from the “digital toy box,” referring to the numerous apps available and their potential to serve as a medium for play. This data can inform policy and practice of researchers, educators and family engagement specialists and optimize early learning potential prior to formal schooling.

Objective An inverse relationship between blood pressure and cognitive function has been found in adults, but limited data are available in adolescents and young adults. We examined the prospective relation between blood pressure and cognitive function in adolescence. Methods We examined the association between BP measured at the ages of 12–15 years in school surveys and cognitive endpoints measured in the Seychelles Child Development Study at ages 17 (n=407) and 19 (n=429) years, respectively. We evaluated multiple domains of cognition based on subtests of the Cambridge Neurological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), the Woodcock Johnson Test of Scholastic Achievement (WJTA), the Finger Tapping test (FT) and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT). We used age-, sex- and height-specific z-scores of systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and mean arterial pressure (MAP). Results Six out of the 21 cognitive endpoints tested were associated with BP. However, none of these associations were found to hold for both males and females or for different subtests within the same neurodevelopmental domain or for both SBP and DBP. Most of these associations disappeared when analyses were adjusted for selected potential confounding factors such as socio-economic status, birth weight, gestational age, body mass index, alcohol consumption, blood glucose, and total n-3 and n-6 polyunsaturated fats. Conclusions Our findings do not support a consistent association between BP and subsequent performance on tests assessing various cognitive domains in adolescents.

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