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Dates, venue, topics, and how to decide if this Virginia event fits your career stage
Digital culture now shapes intake questions, not just later client preferences. The Virginia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (VAMFT) is addressing that shift with its 2026 annual conference, "Beyond the Screen: Thriving in a Digital World," set for November 6-7 at The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen. According to a September 21, 2026 Henrico Citizen report, registration starts at $50.
Agenda topics include social media and mental health, parent-child relationships, AI, gaming, sleep, digital boundaries, and student research posters. For working LMFTs and MFT candidates, the practical question is whether contact hours count toward Virginia renewal, where to find free MFT CEUs, and how this event compares with AAMFT and Bowen fall conferences.
The VAMFT "Beyond the Screen: Thriving in a Digital World" conference is a two-day, in-person event for marriage and family therapists in Virginia on November 6-7, 2026, at The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen. The venue address is 2880 Mountain Road, Glen Allen, VA 23060, and registration starts at $50.
The official VAMFT listing shows two separate sessions: Friday, November 6 beginning at 1:00 PM and Saturday, November 7 beginning at 8:00 AM. The on-site Glen Allen address confirms an in-person format, so plan for travel and lodging rather than a virtual login through teletherapy platforms for marriage and family therapists.
The $50 starting rate is the only public attendee price confirmed in the materials reviewed here. VAMFT has not published verified member, nonmember, student, or community/parent registration tiers in the sources reviewed. Exhibitor and vendor pricing is listed separately at $200 for VAMFT members and $250 for nonmembers, with setup Friday before lunch and takedown Saturday after 5:00 PM. Because attendee tiers, early-bird deadlines, and cancellation terms are not clearly stated, check VAMFT's official registration page before purchasing.
The conference is described as partly open to parents and community members as well as mental-health professionals. That likely means at least one community-oriented ticket type or session block exists, but do not assume a separate community rate until VAMFT confirms it. For refunds, VAMFT's policy is not specified in available results; if ticketing runs through Eventbrite, refund terms are set by VAMFT as the organizer.
Before booking travel, confirm the exact on-site schedule and venue address directly with VAMFT, and verify whether the in-person format still applies to all sessions you plan to attend.
Some MFTs still treat a couple's phone use as background noise; others now see screens, algorithms, and digital habits as core relational context. "Beyond the Screen" pushes toward the second view, making technology a systemic lens rather than a side issue.
The conference examines how technology and digital culture affect relationships, mental health, families, and communities. It gives clinicians language and frameworks for issues that now arrive weekly in sessions: conflicted parent-child tech rules, sleep disruption, gaming-related arguments, AI in daily life, and social media boundaries in relationships.
Stacy Jagger, a marriage and family therapist known professionally as "Dr. Sassy," is scheduled to deliver the keynote. Program organizers have not yet published a full speaker roster or session-by-session agenda. Public listings point to a 1 p.m. start on November 6 and an 8 a.m. start on November 7, but the exact day-by-day lineups remain unavailable as of this writing.
The topic list matters well beyond MFT programs in Virginia. Digital-life tensions show up in MFT caseloads everywhere, so clinicians who learn to address screen-related patterns can carry those skills into any state, practice setting, or teletherapy session. That makes the conference less of a regional event and more of a timely clinical-skills stop.
The Beyond the Screen agenda translates digital-culture topics into concrete clinical moves. Use these assessment prompts and systemic interventions to turn screen-time, gaming, AI, and social-media concerns into family and couple work.
| Conference Topic | Assessment Question to Ask | Systemic Intervention Idea | Supporting Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversational AI in family life | How is conversational AI entering your family system, including who uses it, for what purposes, and how it affects emotional support, privacy, conflict, and connection? | Use a family-systems map or genogram to identify how AI functions in the relational system, then collaboratively develop boundaries around privacy, disclosure, emotional reliance, and human dialogue. | A 2026 review conceptualizes conversational AI in everyday family life and reports that couples may experience AI agents as emotional support and guides for relationship insight during struggles. |
| Generative AI companion chatbots and couple connection | When you turn to a companion chatbot for comfort, advice, or self-disclosure, what happens afterward in your relationship with your partner or other important people? | Validate any short-term benefit while tracking displacement of human contact, intensity of use, sensitive disclosure, and couple interaction; negotiate a shared plan that uses AI as an adjunct rather than a replacement for relational support. | A 2025 relationship science review reports companion chatbots can produce short-term connection, reduce loneliness, provide support, and prompt self-evaluation; a four-week trial found reduced human socializing, especially with longer use. |
| Social media, supportive relationships, and youth sleep | What social-media experiences are helping or harming connection in the family, and how do scrolling, notifications, or online conflict affect bedtime, sleep, mood, and attention? | Create a collaborative family media plan emphasizing supportive offline and online relationships, notification and bedtime boundaries, co-regulation, and communication rather than punitive time limits. | The AAP states that strong supportive relationships online and offline are associated with healthier social-media use, and endless-scrolling features can interfere with sleep. |
| Action-packed gaming or intense screen content before sleep | What happens in your child's body and family interactions after action-packed gaming or intense screen content near bedtime, such as greater alertness, conflict, difficulty settling, or delayed sleep? | Conduct a bedtime routine experiment: move stimulating games and intense content earlier, replace them with a predictable low-arousal shared routine, and review sleep and family-conflict patterns together. | The AAP reports screens can increase alertness and heart rate, especially during action-packed games or intense content, making it harder for children to fall asleep. |
| Screen time and shortened sleep | Across household members, how does each additional hour of daily screen use relate to bedtime, total sleep, next-day mood, and couple or family interactions? | Use a shared sleep-and-screen log to identify reciprocal cycles of screen use, delayed or shortened sleep, irritability, and relational conflict; then test a family-wide wind-down routine and revisit the pattern. | A 2025 meta-analysis found each additional hour of daily screen time was associated with about 3 to 5 minutes shorter sleep and higher odds of short sleep. |
| Family technology rules: balance, content, co-viewing, communication | Are your technology rules centered only on minutes, or do they also address content, balance with sleep and relationships, co-viewing, and open communication? | Replace unilateral screen-time policing with a negotiated family media agreement covering balance, content, co-use, communication, sleep protection, and developmentally appropriate exceptions. | The AAP reports insufficient evidence for a universal specific screen-time limit and states rules focused on balance, content, co-viewing, and communication are associated with better well-being. |
| Household screen use, parent well-being, and in-person connection | How does screen use affect both adolescents and parents in this household, and what in-person activities might buffer effects on sleep, loneliness, life satisfaction, and family connection? | Plan recurring screen-free in-person activities involving parents and adolescents, while assessing whether these activities moderate sleep, loneliness, emotional well-being, and life-satisfaction difficulties. | A 2026 working paper reports higher overall screen time was associated with poorer sleep quality, greater loneliness, lower emotional well-being, and lower life satisfaction among teenagers and parents; in-person social activities moderated harmful effects for parents. |
The two-day conference will examine how technology and digital culture affect relationships, mental health, families and communities.
Will the Beyond the Screen conference CE credits actually count toward Virginia LMFT renewal? The short answer is that you should verify before you register.
VAMFT's event page advertises contact hours for the Nov. 6-7 program in Glen Allen, and the conference materials describe hours issued jointly by VSCSW and VAMFT.1 However, the available 2026 conference details do not state a total contact-hour count, and the event page does not show a separate Virginia Board of Counseling pre-approval statement for this specific conference. That does not mean the hours are automatically rejected; it means renewal acceptance cannot be confirmed from the published materials alone. If you need board-accepted CE for a Virginia LMFT renewal deadline, contact VAMFT or the Board of Counseling before paying.
Even if CE approval details are still being finalized, the professional development value is concrete. The conference puts you in the same room with supervisors, licensed clinicians, and VAMFT leadership, which is often harder to arrange during a busy practicum or residency year. Board-recognized learning matters, but so does the kind of informal supervision-friendly networking that state association events are built for.
VAMFT positions itself as the professional home for licensed MFTs, MFT residents, MFT students, and mental health professionals who practice from a systemic perspective.2 Current dues amounts and student or associate pricing for 2026 are not listed in the supplied membership materials, so confirm those directly on VAMFT's site. Conference registration starts at $50, but member discounts may vary by event.
Virginia LMFTs renewing in 2026, MFT residents and students building a Virginia network, and faculty who want a compact way to expose students to state-level systemic practice will get the most. Out-of-state attendees can still benefit from the content, but they should check whether Virginia-specific CE will transfer before treating this as a renewal event.
Some attendees treat a state conference as a passive way to bank continuing education hours, while students and early-career therapists can treat the same event as a launchpad for research visibility and clinical networking. The 2026 VAMFT conference, Nov. 6-7 at The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen, offers both paths, but the details require confirmation.
The public announcement says VAMFT is accepting proposals for research poster presentations1, but it does not specify the submission deadline, formatting rules, or eligibility for students. Do not guess at those details. Start with the official VAMFT website and the 2026 conference page, then open the official call-for-proposals PDF or the submission portal. If the portal is unclear, email the VAMFT program chair or conference contact listed on the registration page. AAMFT also maintains student and early-career resources for proposal guidance and conference participation. If selected, note the published venue schedule: setup begins Friday, Nov. 6 prior to lunch, and takedown is Saturday, Nov. 7 after the conference commences at 5:00 pm1.
A portion of the conference will be open to parents and community members, but the announcement does not identify which sessions qualify or what registration category applies. Check the official agenda and session descriptions for public access labels, or email VAMFT directly to ask. While you wait, BLS.gov's Occupational Outlook Handbook for marriage and family therapists, accredited school program pages such as the Virginia Tech MFT program, and professional association pages can provide broader career and licensure context, including alternative career paths for LMFTs.
Fall 2026 gives Virginia MFTs three distinct events within a month. Compare them in this order: CE approval, cost, format, travel, audience and orientation. Use the table below to check each factor before you register.
| Detail | VAMFT Beyond the Screen | AAMFT Systemic Family Therapy Conference | Bowen Center 63rd Symposium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Array | |||
| Array | |||
| Array | |||
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A state association devoting its annual meeting to AI, gaming, sleep, and digital boundaries is a strong signal that technology has moved from a niche topic to core clinical territory. MFTs are no longer encountering screen-related issues as an occasional referral question; these dynamics now sit inside regular couple and family work.
Families arrive with conflicts over screen time, gaming, social media, and digital privacy, issues at the heart of digital-age family stress therapy. Beyond the Screen gives clinicians a shared language for tracing how devices affect attachment, communication, and family hierarchy, rather than treating the phone or console as a separate problem.
The same conference agenda also covers technology as part of practice. Teletherapy competence, AI-assisted documentation, and digital boundaries with clients raise practical questions about privacy, informed consent, and interstate licensing telehealth. State associations are now building conference time around these operational and ethical demands.
Marriagefamilytherapist.org already covers teletherapy and virtual practice for MFTs in detail; this event turns those written guides into peer conversation and state-specific guidance. A full conference on digital life is less a trend piece than a sign that responsible technology use is now central to systemic therapy.
