We've all seen it — or perhaps we've even been "that parent": A child falls off the teeter totter while his dad is engrossed in work email. Or a toddler in the coffee shop screams for another cookie, while her oblivious mom texts away.
The pervasiveness of smartphones seems to have ushered in a new era of distracted parenting, says pediatrician Michael Rich, MD, MPH, founder and director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital.
"I've seen so many parents plop their kids down at the playground and then sit on the bench with their phones," Rich says. "We delude ourselves into thinking that we're multitasking, but all kinds of cognitive research shows that this really isn't the case. We can only really concentrate on one thing at a time."
So, how is smartphone use affecting children? Child development experts fear that children may feel they are competing for attention when parents are glued to their gadgets. Smartphone use may even be harming children's social development, with children seeing that their parents think that socializing with a screen as just as good as face-to-face interaction.
In addition, some evidence suggests smartphone use may be to blame for a 10 percent uptick in unintentional childhood injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Parents' smartphone use has also been linked to children's misbehavior at mealtimes (Pediatrics, 2014opens in new window).
Yet, smartphones can also benefit family life: Because they allow parents to work from anywhere — even the sidelines of a soccer game — working parents can spend more time with their children. Psychologists and other experts in child development say that the key to responsible smartphone use is to be more deliberate in our use of technology in an age when we are constantly surrounded by it.
"It's really about remembering that our most precious commodities in life are our time and attention, and that these devices will take both of those things away from us if we're not mindful of it," Rich says.
Examining the data
According to CDC data, unintentional injuries to children under age 5 rose 10 percent between 2007 and 2012, after falling for much of the prior decade. Interestingly, Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, and today, nearly two-thirds of Americans are smartphone owners, according to the Pew Research Center.
Given these data, researchers at North Shore-LIJ Cohen Children's Medical Center decided to observe 50 caregiver-child pairs at seven New York playgrounds to find out how much caregivers were distracted by smartphones. They found that caregivers were distracted in about 74 percent of the recorded 371 two-minute playground episodes. Electronic device use accounted for 30 percent of parenting distractions, a figure only slightly behind talking with other adults, which accounted for 33 percent of all distractions. Other distractions included eating, drinking and reading.
What may be more enlightening about this work, however, is that the scientists found that children were more likely to engage in dangerous behaviors — such as throwing sand, walking up a slide, sliding head first and jumping off moving swings — when caregivers were distracted.
While none of the children in the sample were seriously injured, study author Ruth Milanaik, DO, of Cohen Children's Medical Center, says this type of research may help alert parents to how distracting these devices might be — and make them more mindful of a child's safety.
"Sometimes, children will get injured despite the closest supervision, and this is a part of natural growing and learning," Milanaik says. "However, all efforts should be made by caregivers to keep these incidents to a minimum."
Another study looked at a different aspect of parents' smartphone use: how it affects children's behavior. Jenny Radesky, MD, a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, and her team observed 55 different groups of parents and young children eating at fast food restaurants. The researchers recorded the behaviors of the children and the adults, including how frequently the adults used their smartphones during the meal. They found that 40 caregivers took out their phones or other mobile devices at some point during the meal, and while many only used the device briefly, about 40 percent of those who took out a device were engrossed in it for the entire meal — swiping, texting and ignoring their children altogether.
The researchers also found that the caregivers who were most absorbed in their devices were the ones who were most likely to respond harshly to the childrenopens in new window, either physically or with a scolding tone of voice. One female caregiver, for example, kicked a child's foot under the table, and another pushed a child's hands away as he tried to lift her face up and away from her screen (Pediatrics, 2014opens in new window).
"These devices are so multimodal and contain such a depth of information that they take a lot of our cognitive resources when we're using them, and that's what it looked like when we were observing these parents," Radesky says. "I know when I'm in the midst of a work email I get like that. I want to construct it the right way, and then my son yells to get my attention. I'm a lot more frustrated with that sort of interruption of my flow."
Children are also outwardly sharing their concerns about their parents' smartphone use, says clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair, EdD, author of "The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Ageopens in new window" (Harper, 2013). In her private practice, Steiner-Adair says many kids express feeling like their parents were missing in action because they were routinely engaged in cellphone conversations, texting or sitting in front of glowing computer screens. Younger children in particular have told Steiner-Adair about how they feel like they have to compete with their parents' devices for attention.
"I've heard so many stories about how a parent will be in the middle of an important conversation with the child, and then their phone goes off and they'll take a call and it's like they completely disconnect from the moment," Steiner-Adair says. "It's upsetting to us as grown-ups when we do it to each other, and it's especially upsetting to children when their parents do it to them."
In fact, a study by psychologists at the University of Essex found that the mere presence of a phone on the table — even if it's turned off — makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected, and keeps conversations lighter and more focused on topics of little controversy or consequence for fear of being interrupted (Journal of Social and Personal Relationshipsopens in new window, 2013).
In her research and interviews with families and teachers, Sherry Turkle, PhD, has found that today's children are being deprived of important conversations with their parents due to the disruptions of technology.
"What I try to do in my conversations with parents and children is to peel back what the statistics about our phone use actually look like in the lives of parents and kids," says Turkle, author of the 2015 book "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age." "What I'm seeing is parents who are not stepping up to the importance of mentoring, and to the conversations that will create empathy and a capacity for solitude in their children."
In addition, many parents are not serving as good role models, particularly when it comes to showing children the importance of experiencing solitude and being bored once in a while.
"Children need to be bored sometimes because boredom is their imagination calling them to turn inside," Turkle says. "If they see a parent always going to their phone in moments of boredom or solitude, there's no model, so they think when they have a moment of boredom, they should go to the phone."
When asked why these devices have such a powerful effect on us, Steiner-Adair points to the fact that, neurologically and psychologically, we interact more intensely with mobile devices compared with more passive technologies such as television. Experts have linked many addictions, including substance abuse, gambling and Internet addiction to an individual's lack of dopamine, the neurotransmitter linked to the brain's reward and pleasure centers (Brain Sciences, 2012). And while statistics show that only about 10 percent of people develop an addiction to Internet use, many experts suggest that dopamine is to blame for our increasing reliance on smartphones and other mobile devices. Every time we receive a mobile alert on our phones, our brains likely release dopamine, Steiner-Adair says.
"You hear that ping, the brain reacts and you get excited," she says. "It's a stimulant, which is why everybody loves it and also why everyone is so cranky when you take it away."
Helping families reconnect
Technological innovation will always outpace the ability of researchers to study its effects, but clinicians like Steiner-Adair are helping families navigate the opportunities and challenges that accompany the use of today's technologies. Primarily, she and other experts work with their clients to help them understand that, while children don't need their parents to be 100 percent responsive to them to have healthy social and emotional development, there is a tipping point.
"Kids thrive in the context of really good relationships with their parents, and never before has technology challenged that relationship and that direct in-vivo connection as much as it does today," Steiner-Adair says.
To help with that, she recommends that parents get up 30 minutes early to check email and tend to start-of-day online tasks before waking up the kids. Keep mealtimes, drivetimes and bedtimes tech-free, allowing families to chat about their day or sit quietly and daydream, which can be a creative, calming and synthesizing for children, she says.
Rich agrees about signing off during dinnertime, which he says is one of the most important daily family rituals parents can instill.
"One of the things we do have some quite robust research on is that a family sit-down meal is one of the most protective things you can do not only for your kid's nutrition, but for a whole host of psychological well-being issues, and once a screen is on, all those positive effects disappear because you're distracted," he says. "The point is not just the eating but the ritual importance of breaking bread together and talking about your day and the processing of experience." (JAMA Pediatrics, 2014opens in new window).
Steiner-Adair also urges her clients to tell their children what they're doing on their phones, to help them feel less isolated.
"Psychologists have to help parents understand that a child has no clue what you're doing when you're looking at your phone — whether you're making a doctor's appointment for them or you're shopping," she says. "It's a good idea to say, ‘Actually, honey, I'm doing something for you and me right now.' That can help them feel better."
Rich also encourages the families he sees in his practice to observe a digital Sabbath once a week — 24 hours during which everyone puts away all of their devices.
"Most people when I first suggest it are pretty skeptical, but those who have tried it say they have felt completely liberated by it," he says. "Kids go outside, parents take walks; families start doing things that have really disappeared from our lives because that available space has been sucked up by the existence of the iPhone."
