Child depression and anxiety have been associated with electronic media use, but the comorbidity between the two has rarely been accounted for in analyses. We examined both child and parent reports of electronic media use in relation to parent-reported child depression and anxiety. Using survey and interview data collected for 9- to 11-year-olds from the 21-site adolescent brain cognitive development study, we conducted generalized linear mixed models. Our results demonstrated that electronic media use was more strongly associated with depression than anxiety, and that accounting for depression significantly reduced the relationship between electronic media use and anxiety. Different categories of electronic media showed differential relationships to anxiety and depression, with video gaming and video chatting related to anxiety, but video watching related to depression. These findings provide important data to ground theories of the mechanisms that contribute to these associations.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10578-019-00892-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background Family history of depression (FHD) is a known risk factor for the new onset of depression. However, it is unclear if FHD is clinically useful for prognosis in adolescents with current, ongoing, or past depression. This preregistered study uses a longitudinal, multi‐informant design to examine whether a child’s FHD adds information about future depressive episodes and depression severity applying state‐of‐the‐art predictive out‐of‐sample methodology. Methods We examined data in adolescents with current or past depression (age 11–17 years) from the National Institute of Mental Health Characterization and Treatment of Adolescent Depression (CAT‐D) study. We asked whether a history of depression in a first‐degree relative was predictive of depressive episode duration (72 participants) and future depressive symptom severity in probands (129 participants, 1,439 total assessments). Results Family history of depression, while statistically associated with time spent depressed, did not improve predictions of time spent depressed, nor did it improve models of change in depression severity measured by self‐ or parent‐report. Conclusions Family history of depression does not improve the prediction of the course of depression in adolescents already diagnosed with depression. The difference between statistical association and predictive models highlights the importance of assessing predictive performance when evaluating questions of clinical utility.