Smartphones Are 'Contaminating' Family Life, Study Suggests (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets can be distracting from child-rearing, upending family routines and fueling stress in the home, a small, new study finds. Incoming communication from work, friends and the world at large is "contaminating" family mealtime, bedtime and playtime, said study lead author Dr. Jenny Radesky. She's an assistant professor of developmental behavioral pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School. Her comments stem from her team's study involving interviews with 35 parents and caregivers of young children in the Boston area. "This tension, this stress, of trying to balance newly emerging technologies with the established patterns and rituals of our lives is extremely common, and was expressed by almost all of our participants," Radesky said. "We have to toggle between what might be stress-inducing or highly cognitively demanding mobile content and responding to our kids' behavior," she said. The result, said Radesky, is often a rise in parent-child tension and overall stress. Modern parents and caregivers interact with tablets, smartphones and other communication devices for about three hours a day, the study authors said in background notes. Radesky's team previously found that when parents used mobile devices during meals they interacted less with their children, and became stressed when children tried to grab their attention away from the device. The new study included 22 mothers, nine fathers and four grandmothers. Participants were between 23 and 55 years old (average age 36) and cared for toddlers or young children up to age 8. Roughly one-third were single parents, and nearly six in 10 were white. On the plus side, many parents said that mobile devices facilitated their ability to work from home. But that could fuel anxiety, too. Some said smartphones provided access to the outside world, and alleviated some of the boredom and stress of child-rearing. On the down side, caregivers described being caught in a tug-of-war between their devices and their children. The study findings were published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Comments

Maybe

[HalAtWork]

When I'm around my kid I just don't use these things, including video game consoles or watching TV. Even if my kid is playing well enough by himself I've got stuff to do anyway like clean or make his meal, only time I really have to pay attention to anything personally for myself is nap time or when he's gone to bed, or off with mom just the two of them.

Even before he was born I found that going online for too long was causing me stress and I'm not sure for what, I mean, at one point I was just refreshing favorite sites, making comments, soaking up any news item or just following trends like memes etc. My wife got pissed off because she wasn't into that and demanded I make time for her, and it got to the point where I had to do that or something in the relationship was going to go real bad. So I just cut back, and found I had a lot more space in my head to think, be creative, and enjoy what I already had. It only took about a couple weeks before I didn't even remember what I was doing all that time. It seems like a waste now.

But then my wife got a smartphone and Facebook was a thing and suddenly the script has flipped! Now I really see why she was annoyed. :)

Re:Maybe

[jrumney]

Talking about things flipping around:

"This tension, this stress, of trying to balance newly emerging technologies with the established patterns and rituals of our lives is extremely common

I think for a lot of the young people starting to have families now, the smartphone is the established patterns and rituals, and the baby is the newly emerging technology in this story.

Effect on children

[manu0601]

The next interesting study will be about parent mobile usage's impact on children. What person do you become when your parents preferred a machine to you for years?

Re:Effect on children

[93 Escort Wagon]

Much ado about nothing. My wife and I spend lots of time on our devices, and it didn't turn our daughter into an axe mur

What a sham

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for children "being seen but not heard".

In the "traditional" Western family model, kids pretty much had to put up with whatever their parents gave them. Bad food, lots of chores, and lots of time being ignored by the parents (especially the father)? Too bad, so sad, suck it up. You had a roof over your head (when you weren't getting shooed outside so Mom could get some stuff done for once) and clothes on your back (albeit hand-me-downs) and that was good enough.

Sure some parents were wise, insightful, and pretty awesome during those few hours of the day when Dad wasn't working 50-60 hour weeks and Mom wasn't, you know, cleaning stuff or . . . whatever. Others weren't. It doesn't take cell phones and tablets for parents to find ways to ignore their children. My paternal grandfather would read sci-fi novels in the basement while drinking beer instead of interacting with anyone . . . including his kids (my dad & aunt).

About the only difference here is that parents would almost all have a few moments of face time with the kids that they could hardly avoid: dinner, and church on Sundays. So if you are using your phone during those times then yeah it can make a difference. But if they are getting more time with you during other parts of the day . . .

Not new

[blindseer]

I remember watching The Waltons on TV (a show about a family living in a Virginia rural community through the Depression and WWII) where one episode focused on the family getting a telephone. It was a big deal and not without people being concerned about how it might affect their life. A rather humorous, and quite realistic, scene involved the patriarch having to leave the bathtub to answer the phone. I believe the episode ended with them getting rid of the telephone but it reappears later in the series with much less fanfare.

Then came television. People were concerned about how that might affect the family too. I lived through some of this as I remember Dad bringing home a second TV after Mom demanded the one TV we had be removed from the kitchen. Dad did not want his TV viewing to be interrupted by supper. Come to think of it I was probably watching The Waltons while eating supper.

Computers, internet, video games, all technology that was going to invade "family time". That's just the electronics. Some of you may have read enough history to know how big of a deal clocks were to how society worked. Automobiles were also supposed to ruin "family time" or something.

Same stuff on a different day. People learn to turn the stuff off when they should or suffer the consequences.

Re:Not new

[AthanasiusKircher]

Obviously such complaints aren't new, and there are always complaints about how new technology is ruining X aspect of society. But I do think we need to recognize that something is a bit different about how much smartphones (and to a lesser extent other devices like tablets) are transforming our ability to have an uninterrupted face-to-face interaction.

People have always had distractions. And even if they didn't, they'd "space out" and stop listening when they weren't interested in a portion of the conversation. So distraction isn't new. But smartphones provide numerous possible personalized and customized entertaining distractions (many of which, like social media, tend to encourage continuous interactivity), so each individual at, say, the dinner table can be tempted to use his/her phone for some different distraction. Rather than having a kid or dad space out for a couple minutes and then rejoin the conversation, now the kid can find an entertaining thing which can pull his attention away until someone else "breaks the spell."

And oddly social etiquette had suddenly changed just in the past few years so people aren't insulted when others do this frequently. If you were having a conversation with someone and they suddenly pulled out a book and started reading while you were trying to talk to them, you would likely be annoyed. But when someone pulls out a phone these days, we are increasingly accepting that they must be doing something important (e.g., responding to a critical message) and also can " multitask" (hint -- that doesn't really work well). But they might just be checking Facebook or whatever.

So yeah, distractions have been around forever, and people have always complained about "the new thing." But if you haven't noticed, smartphones ARE significantly changing social interactions in unprecedented ways. Whether or not the changes are good or bad is a matter of debate, but they are disruptive in new ways.

Re:Not new

[drinkypoo]

Automobiles were also supposed to ruin "family time" or something.

But they did. If you had an automobile, you could feasibly commute to a job in another city. So now... we're all commuting. And the lost time is taken away from our loved ones, if we even have time for those. The automobile outcompeted rail with anticompetitive behavior, and now we're trying to figure out how to have self-driving cars to solve the problems caused by not extrapolating rail to PRT, but instead going back and extrapolating the horse-cart out to the automobile. We had the technology for self-driving cars in the 1800s, and it was called rail. Combine it with the concepts behind automated looms and you get automated transport networks. Instead we have... this.

Same stuff on a different day. People learn to turn the stuff off when they should or suffer the consequences.

It's more true with smartphones because fairly simple means can be used to avoid the problems; anyone who really has to stay in touch can use do-not-disturb mode to permit the office to reach them while otherwise enjoying their dinner. But you can't just wave a magic wand and make commuter culture go away. You still have to pay your bills.

This is fucking hilarious

[rsilvergun]

60 hour work weeks for both parents are "contaminating" family life. Smart phones are just the means we stay in touch with our kids during those long work hours.

True, but not like it's never happened before.

[bobjr94]

When I was little I would want to keep playing with my trainset and not want to go sit down and eat dinner. 10 years later computers and video games kept me in my room. 10 years later internet and online gaming kept me up allnight. Some people watch tv all night and don't even like the shows. There is always something new and exciting to do.

But I do see a difference with personal devices. You can't bring your trainset, console video games or desktop computer to the restaurant or to bed. It happens to us, my wife can spend a whole dinner on facebook, checking every 30 seconds for new notifications and feeling the need to instantly respond to everyone. We may as well be eating separately. Work emails and texts from coworkers 24 hours per day don't help either. Same thing at home, the bedroom is not as active as it once was, facebooking or playing candy crush until she falls asleep and hardly any 'special' together time.