Perceived Parental Distraction by Technology and Mental Health Among Emerging Adolescents

Perceived Parental Distraction by Technology and Mental Health Among Emerging Adolescents

Mental health education

Kristen Walker

Audrey-Ann Deneault, André Plamondon, Ross D. Neville, Rachel Eirich, Brae Anne McArthur, Suzanne Tough, Sheri Madigan

JAMA Network Open

Vol. 7

No. 8

2024

Journal article

English

United States

Open Access

Digital technology is woven into the fabric of modern family life. Smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices help families with communication, scheduling, and entertainment. Despite its benefits, routine technology use (eg, texting, scrolling through social media) can also disrupt interactions between parents and their children of all ages, a phenomenon encapsulated by the understudied concept of technoference. A recent phone-tracking study of parents with young infants found that parents spend 5.12 hours per day on their smartphones and 27% of the time with their infant engaged with their digital device. Similar rates are identified across age groups, with 68% of US parents with a child younger than 17 years reporting that they become distracted by their smartphones during interactions with their children. In early childhood, parental technoference is associated with decreases in parent-child engagement, reduced ability to notice and attend to children’s needs, less frequent and lower-quality joint play and conversational turns, more negative responses to children’s behavior, and higher risk of child injury. In adolescence, adolescent-perceived parental technoference is associated with higher levels of parent-child conflict and lower levels of parental emotional support and warmth. When children’s emotional and physical needs are consistently ignored or inappropriately responded to, they are at risk of developing mental health difficulties, underscoring the need to investigate parental technoference as a potential precipitant of the development of mental health difficulties, such as depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, and inattention.