Parent Education is Changing: A Review of Smartphone Apps
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose was to critique existing parenting apps using established criteria and health literacy guidelines. Study Design: Descriptive methodology was used. Methods: The Apple App Store was searched using the terms parenting, child health, and infant health. To be included, the apps had to have relevant content (parenting, child health, or infant health), be in English, and contain parent education. After eliminating apps that failed to meet inclusion criteria from the original 203 apps, 46 apps were reviewed. The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool was used to evaluate the health literacy subscales called Understandability and Actionability. Content analysis included Authority, Objectivity, Accuracy, Timeliness, and Usability. Results: The majority of the apps (70%) were in English only. The price ranged from free to $4.99. The purpose, target audience, and topics varied. Although all included apps were for parents, some were for more targeted groups of parents. The source of the information was not presented in 26% of the apps. Most apps took the user to a Web site or an article to read. Functionality of the apps was limited, with none of them providing a customized experience. Clinical Implications: Much development and research is needed before mobile health (mHealth) solutions can be recommended by nurses caring for new parents. It is critical that consumers and interdisciplinary professionals be involved in the early design phase of the product to ensure that the end product is acceptable and usable and that it will lead to healthy behaviors.
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GAI offers promising support for parents by enhancing their ability to educate and engage with their children.
“GAI offers promising support for parents by enhancing their ability to educate and engage with their children.”
From SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot (2025) · cites this paper as [11]
AI-driven systems can support parenting education and provide evidence-based advice through applications and chatbots, delivering micro-interventions.
“Prior work suggested that AI-driven systems can support parenting education [61] and provide evidence-based advice through applications and chatbots, delivering micro-interventions such as teaching parents how to praise their children effectively [11, 17] or offering strategies to teach complex concepts [55, 69].”
From SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot (2025) · cites this paper as [11]
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Petsolari, M., Ibrahim, S. B., & Slovak, P. (2024) · Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3613904.3642619 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot
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- Authors
- Davis, D. W., Logsdon, M. C., Vogt, K., Rushton, J., Myers, J., Lauf, A., & Hogan, F.
- Affiliations
- University of Louisville (US)
- Venue
- MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing
- Published
- 2017-09
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 248-256
- ISSN
- 0361-929X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2694759995
- Cited by
- 68
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 5
- FWCI
- 9.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- MCN The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Keywords
- parenting apps, mobile health, health literacy, parent education, infant health, child health, app quality assessment, PEMAT, usability, source disclosure
- MeSH terms
- Smartphone, Humans, Parents, Self Care, Health Literacy, Information Seeking Behavior, Mobile Applications
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