Abstract
Research suggests that parent–child communication is rapidly changing as a result of the massive adoption of mobile devices and their penetration into interpersonal interaction within the family. Accordingly, this study aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of the impact of mobile device use on the quality of parent–child interaction in early childhood, based on ethnographic observations of 60 families at two playgrounds in the United States. The research findings suggest that parental behavior can be classified along a continuum of high engagement, divided engagement, and disengagement, often dependent upon whether and how parents use their mobile phone. Though mobile phones were not the only distracting factor during playground visits, their use was more highly correlated with parents’ disengagement from their children as compared to other distractors. Parents’ mobile phone use also corresponded to two main consequences for their children: safety concerns and emotional concerns, both resulting in missed opportunities for social learning. The results of this study call for closer attention to parental uses of mobile phones in public spaces.
Keywords
Introduction
Throughout their childhood, children spend significant time with their parents outside the house, participating in situations such as visiting the doctor, shopping at the supermarket, or enjoying leisure activities such as visiting playgrounds. Playground time is probably the most common shared family outdoor activity that not only contributes to children’s physical development but also expands their horizons and facilitates social learning. Playground visits provide youngsters with stimuli that enhance general knowledge, foster encounters with new children outside of their social networks, and challenge them with experiences in which they may acquire significant social skills such as patience, restraint, collaboration, turn-taking, and courtesy (Sluckin, 1981). The enriching potential of playgrounds emphasizes parents’ role as primary agents of socialization who interpret social realities for children and help them successfully integrate into these unique public places. Spending time together at the playground thus provides parents and children with a wealth of opportunities for dialogue, play, learning, and overall enriching interactions.
Over the past few years, however, communication between parents and children has been affected by the massive penetration of mobile media. When using mobile devices, both parents and children may demonstrate phubbing (i.e., a play on “snubbing”) behaviors by concentrating on the device while ignoring their interactional partners (e.g., Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2016). Accordingly, it is becoming more and more common to see parents and children spending time together in various public places, but at the same time being absorbed by the screen instead of being attuned to each other.
Bull (2004) called this phenomenon a bubble, in an attempt to describe the sense of disconnection from the surrounding context that mobile phone use may promote. Furthermore, the rapid adoption of smartphones—that offer extensive Internet surfing, sophisticated gaming, information and news applications, and access to social media—intensifies the impact that their public use may exert on personal interactions in the immediate environment (de Souza e Silva & Firth, 2012; Hatuka & Toch, 2014; Ito, Okabe, & Anderson, 2009).
Such phenomena have attracted significant attention from scholars and popular media with respect to interactions with strangers or with friends and spouses, but little empirical effort has been made so far to explore how the use of mobile devices may affect the quality of parent–child communication during their shared family time away from home. In this study, which is part of a larger project exploring parents’ and children’s media use in different public places, we examined the parent–child interactional patterns during playground-related activities. We aimed to examine in depth the implications of mobile device use for the quality of parent–child interaction, as well as the aspects of mobile device use related to children’s safety, emotional well-being, and social learning.
Literature review
Parental use of mobile media while caregiving
We continue to witness the growing social phenomenon of the mediatization of childhood, wherein the media and the institutions behind them permeate all aspects and levels of children’s personal and social lives (Krotz, 2007). This phenomenon became even more prominent as mobile media turned interactive: the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 marked the birth of the digitods—a new generation of children born with ready access to a vast range of mobile touchscreen devices (Holloway, Green, & Stevenson, 2015).
While the pros and cons of parental and children’s mobile device use have captured some public attention, very limited research to date has explored parents’ mobile use in the presence of their children and how it may affect parent–child interactions (Steiner-Adair & Barker, 2013; Turkle, 2011). Radesky, Miller, et al. (2014) were the first to operationalize parents’ level of device use during parent–child interaction as “the extent to which the primary focus of the caregiver’s attention and engagement was with the device rather than the child” (p. 845). This behavior has been recently defined as parental screen distraction (PSD) that applies to situations “in which parents or caregivers are distracted from performing behaviors associated with the parent role due to engagement with a screened device” (Blackman, 2015, p. 6), or simply technoference (i.e., technology interference in parent–child interactions; McDaniel & Radesky, 2017). Technoference can be understood as a version of phubbing that focuses specifically on implications for parental interactions. Such parental use of mobile media was found to have various negative outcomes on the quality of childcare (Radesky et al., 2016) and on children’s externalizing and internalizing behavioral problems (McDaniel & Radesky, 2017).
So far, studies of these phenomena have been mostly based on parents’ reports or experimental design, while little is known about the everyday life expressions of parental technoference and its impact on the quality of parent–child interaction, especially during those occasions when parents and children spend time together away from home. What we do know is that parents tend to entertain themselves with their mobile phones while accompanying their children to outdoor recreational activities to avoid boredom or to feel that they are making good use of a “non-productive” time (Rideout, 2013). Furthermore, in a series of observations at fast food restaurants in the US, most parents were found to use mobile phones (40 out of 55), with 16 parents using the device almost continuously throughout the meal. While parents were preoccupied with mobile phones, their children responded restlessly, disrupting the surrounding environment and evoking reprimands from their parents. Only rarely did shared use of mobile phones appear to please both parents and children or stimulate conversation among them (Radesky, Kistin, et al., 2014).
Similarly, the only known study conducted in playgrounds in the US shows that 59% of parents used mobile phones while spending time with their children. More importantly, on those occasions when the phone was in use, parents were less responsive to children’s bids for attention: 56% of parents who used a phone did not respond to their child at all, compared with 11% of parents without a phone (Hiniker et al., 2015). Furthermore, a more recent study conducted in playgrounds in Australia found that an even higher percentage of observed parents (76%) used mobile phones (Mangan, Leavy, & Jancey, 2018). In tandem, both innovative studies demonstrate for the first time that use of mobile phones in playgrounds is an important phenomenon, and their preliminary findings have motivated us to continue to explore the changes that mobile phone use has brought into parent–child interactions. Accordingly, we aim to go beyond the dichotomy of parental response/lack of response to consider a broad spectrum of parents’ emotional availability towards their children (i.e., parents’ responsiveness and attunement to their child’s needs, behaviors, and emotions; Biringen, Derscheid, Vliegen, Closson, & Easterbrooks, 2014), to develop a more nuanced understanding of the impact of mobile device use on the quality of parent–child interaction in early childhood.
Parent–child interactional quality
The extensive research literature indicates that parent–child interaction plays a key role in consolidating a child’s personality, cognitive development, language learning, and socialization to the values and norms of their surrounding society. Such communication begins at birth and is crucial for children’s development at all stages of early childhood (Harrist & Waugh, 2001). According to attachment theory, the emotional closeness between children and the first figures in their lives (e.g., parents and, at times, other caregivers) creates a secure and permanent communication that promotes a sense of self-worth and self-control (Bowlby, 1982, 1988). The feelings of warmth, security, and reciprocity in children’s relations with parents have implications for the extent of children’s response to adults and the efficacy of the socialization process (Laible & Thompson, 2007).
Moreover, there is a connection between the quality of interaction—that is, the extent of children’s confidence in their parents’ emotional responses and availability—and adoption of behaviors that encourage the formation of social ties and adherence to social demands (Cole & Tan, 2007). In this context, the psychology literature emphasizes that effective communication with parents, whether verbal or nonverbal, is essential for proper child development (Ginsburg, 2007; Harrist & Waugh, 2001; Koren-Karie, Oppenheim, Haimovich, & Etzion-Carasso, 2003). One important expression of nonverbal communication is eye contact (Farran & Kasari, 1990; Kleinke, 1986; Schofield, Parke, Castañeda, & Coltrane, 2008). A study examining the responses of toddlers to being watched by adult caregivers indicated that they interpret their caregivers’ gaze as confirming the significance of the activity or behavior undertaken, affording them a sense of confidence. Likewise, during free play in a given space, toddlers and preschool children maintain eye contact with their parents and determine the extent to which their parents are keeping an eye on them (Kidwell, 2005).
Furthermore, Harrist, Pettit, Dodge, and Bates’s (1994) study of interactions between preschool children and their mothers shows that parent–child interactional synchrony (i.e., mutually focused, reciprocated exchanges between interactional partners) is associated with the child’s development of social competence, such as the ability to maintain mutual focus, take turns, and establish a sense of closure in each interaction. Hence, children whose interactions with their mothers were characterized by high levels of positive synchrony displayed greater social competence in their relations with peers, lower levels of aggression, and better adjustment to kindergarten.
Another aspect of interactional quality is the maintenance of parent–child dialogue through which children learn the social rules of discourse, such as waiting their turn to speak, various forms of address, and expression of emotions (Koren-Karie et al., 2003; Laible & Thompson, 2007). Accordingly, when parents accompany their children to activities outside the home, they play a key role in social learning processes (James, 2014). In this context, children learn their parents’ leisure time preferences and the skills they will apply throughout their lives in selecting such activities. Furthermore, parents use the opportunities that arise for internalization of social values and skills (James, 2014; Mannell & Kleiber, 1997). During a game or free play at the playground in particular, parents of preschool children can encourage independence, improvisation, and problem-solving (Little & Eager, 2010).
The presence of parents and children in playgrounds is thus conducive to a variety of opportunities for synchronous communication and bonding that are also important for emotional development and social learning. Maintaining eye contact with parents gives children a feeling of confidence and capability to explore the space around them and test their own skills. Additionally, parents can help their children to successfully explore their surroundings and their own abilities as well as to internalize society’s norms and values.
Considering the importance of playgrounds in children’s development, it would be interesting to ascertain the manifestations of parental technoference (McDaniel & Radesky, 2017) in use of mobile media while their children are engaged in playground activities. Hence, we set out to explore parents’ outdoor digital practices and their potential implications for the quality of parent–child interaction, according to the following research questions:
How do parents use their mobile devices while spending time together with their children in playgrounds?
How does parents’ mobile device use in playgrounds affect parent–child interactional quality?
How does parents’ mobile device use in playgrounds affect children’s safety and emotional well-being?
Method
This qualitative study documented and analyzed the natural behaviors of children and parents in playgrounds as unobtrusively as possible. The study followed a groundbreaking tradition in media studies based on naturalistic observations in public places (e.g., Krotz & Eastman, 1999; Lemish, 1982, 1985). Despite the growing implementation of technological monitoring devices to record interactions in detail (e.g., Barr, Ribner, Coyne, & Linebarger, 2016; Lauricella, Roberts, & Curtis, 2016; Radesky & Bickham, 2016), our ecological approach to media use led us to prioritize an ethnographic study that emphasizes the context of the interaction and allows for qualitative description of the phenomenon of interest (see also Hiniker et al., 2015; Radesky, Kistin, et al., 2014). Unobtrusive observations in a natural surrounding have the significant advantage of being independent of inaccurate self-reporting about a taken-for-granted mundane behavior, such as mobile phone use.
Study participants were parents and children ranging from 2- to 3-year-old toddlers to 4- to 6-year-old preschoolers. We selected these ages because they are especially relevant for examining the impact of mobile device use on parent–child interactions while visiting playgrounds: the interactional quality with caregivers (and especially with parents) and their emotional availability towards their child is of major importance for child development during toddlerhood and the preschool period, in comparison with later childhood stages (Biringen et al., 2014; Harrist & Waugh, 2001). Toddlers were defined by the ability to walk and run steadily and the emergence of language and fine motor skills, while the preschool range represents an important developmental stage in cognitive and social skills, exhibition of fluent language, greater independence, and more self-awareness (Berk, 2003; Feldman, 2016).
Two playgrounds in New Jersey (BP and KS), US, were visited for a total of some 50 hours of observations over 27 visits during the months of May to August 2018: one in a racially diverse neighborhood of lower to middle-class population, and the second in a majority white neighborhood of middle to upper class population. Two trained graduate students who were acquainted with the general topic of the study—a female and a male—completed the observations, following very detailed instructions. The study was approved by the IRB of Rutgers University.
Observations followed families who appeared in the playground during the observational sessions, from the minute they entered to the minute they left, and focused on providing a thick description of the following main categories:
(a) The space (e.g., physical and social characteristics; available mobile media; location of children and parents).
(b) The family (e.g., parent–child demographics; behavior; observed mood; pets and toys).
(c) Parent mobile device use (e.g., when, for how long, and how are they used and under what circumstances).
(d) Child mobile device use (e.g., which media; under what circumstances; who initiates; for how long; parental involvement).
(e) Parents’ emotional availability and parent–child interactional quality (e.g., type of interaction—verbal and nonverbal; who initiates and in what ways; shared attention and eye contact; parents’ sensitivity and responsiveness; scaffolding; positive, neutral, or negative affect).
(f) Parent–environment interaction (e.g., interaction with others; engagement in nonmobile-devices-related activities).
(g) Child–environment interaction (e.g., interaction with others; engagement with playground activities).
The detailed field notes were analyzed thematically, following conventional procedures of qualitative analysis through a process of repeated readings and distillation of categories of behavior (see e.g., Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Each parent–child unit was analyzed qualitatively, while making an attempt to characterize quality of their interactions as a whole, in parallel with detailed analysis of several meaningful interactional episodes, such as children’s bids for help or attention, joint play or dialogue, argument or conflict, children’s success or failure, and parents’ responses.
The parents’ and children’s behaviors were compared between times of mobile device use versus when a device was not in use. Several behavioral parameters were quantified, such as the number of times the mobile device was in use and the total duration (in minutes) of this use. Likewise, for each parent, we calculated the number of occasions that could be categorized as “safety concerns” (i.e., when parents did not notice the potential or actual risk to the child’s safety) and as “emotional well-being concerns” (i.e., when parents were inattentive to the child’s needs, did not provide them with appropriate scaffolding, ignored the child’s feelings such as stress or frustration, and/or did not share their positive emotions of happiness and accomplishment). This calculation was made separately for those periods when parents were engaged with mobile devices versus periods when the device was not in use.
Findings
Mobile phone use and parental engagement
General impressions
The two playgrounds observed are situated in parks and offer multiple play areas geared to younger and older children, with slides, ladders, jungle gyms, and swings. Both are colorful, with red, blue, green, and brown equipment. The two playgrounds have benches and picnic tables scattered throughout. In total, 60 families were observed during the 27 observation sessions, comprised of 46 (60%) mothers, 31 (40%) fathers, 37 (53%) boys, and 33 (47%) girls, aged 2–6. A small number of families (9%) also included older siblings aged 9–17.
Seventy-nine percent of all parents observed used mobile devices at least once; devices were almost exclusively smartphones. During an average observation of 36 minutes per family, parents took their phone out four times and used it for 11 minutes in total (31% of the total time spent at the playground).
Parents most frequently typed and scrolled on their mobile phones, followed by taking pictures of their children. Less often, parents watched or read content on their phones. On a handful of occasions, parents answered and made phone calls that lasted from a few seconds to a few minutes.
In terms of demographics, few differences between groups were detected, suggesting that mobile device use at playgrounds is fairly ubiquitous. While significant differences did not emerge between intersecting identity categories, parents’ engagement may have corresponded to their children’s playground activities and their level of independence. Specifically, when children played independently on equipment such as slides, we observed more parents who displayed low engagement, whereas when children used the swings and asked for help, we observed more parents who displayed high engagement.
Children’s reactions to their parents’ device use varied on an individual basis. Some children seemed unbothered by their parents’ screen time; these children may have been more independent or more willing to engage with potential playmates at the playground, or perhaps they were already used to their parents’ disengagement. Other children acted out to recapture their parents’ attention or became distressed when their parents were distracted with mobile technology.
We should emphasize that mobile phones were not the only distracting factor during playground visits. Parents also disengaged from their children due to conversations with their partners, friends, and other adults at the playground, and nondigital media such as magazines. However, they were most often distracted while using mobile phones. Parents’ levels of engagement with their children were classified along a continuum that includes high engagement, divided engagement, and disengagement. High engagement denotes parental behaviors including active involvement in children’s activities, constant attunement toward the child (e.g., eye contact), the proper response to the child’s bids, frequent verbal and nonverbal communication, and positive affect. On the other end, the disengaged parents were generally tuned out and irresponsive to the child’s request for attention, help, or praise. Their behavior included little or no communication with the child; their body was often turned away from the child, and there was infrequent or no eye contact. In between these opposites, the divided-engagement parents fluctuated between the two ends, being engaged at times and disengaged at other times, or demonstrating a partial level of engagement. Though the vast majority of parents did not belong purely to one category or another, as most displayed some form of divided engagement, the following subsections present three identified levels of engagement in depth, categorizing parents according to their most common behavior vis-à-vis their children.
High engagement
Of the 60 families observed, 16 included parents (27%) that could be categorized as demonstrating high engagement toward the child. In most instances, these parents abstained from mobile device use. Engaged parents tended to be in constant eye contact with the child, effectively preventing them from engaging in dangerous behaviors, helping them with playground equipment, playing with them or observing them during independent play, paying attention and properly responding to their emotions, smiling and laughing. For example: A father and his preschool daughter entered the park and the father followed his child around without using a mobile device. He held her small purse while she played on equipment and he brushed sand and dirt off the bottom of a slide before she went down. He talked to her while she played, and she responded, then he took her to the swings and pushed her while saying “yay!” and “wee!” The dad laughed along with his daughter and when her verbal enthusiasm waned after about 10 minutes, the dad was responsive and asked whether she was ready to get out. When she nodded her head yes, he lifted her out of the swing, then allowed her to run back to the larger playground equipment and he continued to supervise her play. (BP, May 29, 2018)
As can be seen from this example, engaged parents mirrored and facilitated their children’s play with utterances such as “Wee!” and “Yay!,” and some parents even encouraged their children by saying, “You can do it!,” or similar phrases indicating their scaffolding efforts. These parents tended to take their children’s lead around the park, meaning they allowed their children to explore while still monitoring their safety, and they were consistently attentive to them.
A few highly engaged parents used their mobile phones while at the playground, but they did so very briefly, often only glancing down at the screen or typing a quick message before returning their attention to their children. Prolonged use such as making and answering phone calls or scrolling and typing on the screen did not occur during instances of high engagement.
On the flip side, high engagement did not always correspond with positive interactions. Negative outcomes occurred when, for example, parents pushed their children to try activities they seemed scared of or unready to try, and subsequently became aggravated and impatient when the child refused to cooperate or showed signs of vulnerability. Thus, high engagement with the child does not necessarily mean quality or positive interaction. On the whole, however, occasions of synchronized and positive interaction typically occurred when mobile devices were not actively used.
Divided engagement
Twenty-nine families (48%) included parents that demonstrated mostly divided engagement with their children while being distracted for various periods of time by factors such as mobile device use, chatting with other adults (e.g., partners or friends), or taking care of another child. Mobile device use was the most frequent reason for divided engagement. Some divided parents followed their children’s lead and turned to their phones when their children were occupied and did not look for parental attention, while others were observed interrupting an activity with the child to attend to their phones. During these periods, parents either oscillated between their distraction and paying attention to their children, or they concurrently interacted with potential distractions and joined their children in play. To illustrate the former: Two mothers with a toddler son used their phones while playing with the child and observing him play. For example, when they had him on the swings, they sometimes looked at him while they pushed him and sometimes looked at their phones. This created a situation in which the son was happily swinging but the moms were not consistently paying attention to him or to each other; while they used their phones, no one made eye contact or engaged in other communication. (BP, May 8, 2018)
As opposed to the oscillation demonstrated by the parents described above, other parents displayed divided engagement when they constantly used their phones while playing with their children. For example: A father played with his toddler daughter on playground equipment such as stairs, climbing contraptions, and slides. The father looked down at his phone almost the entire time. He climbed with his daughter, put his arm around her when she hugged his leg, followed her when she switched to different areas of the playground and caught her when she went down the slide. At one point, he picked her up and carried her to a landing near the top of the slide, then went to catch her at the bottom, then repeated the process, all while looking down at his phone. Whenever she did something new, he “oooed” and “ahhhed,” but his exclamations were delayed because his attention was divided between his daughter and his phone. The daughter did not seem bothered by this behavior, as she smiled, laughed, and hugged her dad’s leg during their time at the playground. The father too seemed to be enjoying his time with his child despite his mobile device use. (BP, June 6, 2018)
Mobile phone use of parents in this category was typically limited to looking at screens, with occasional scrolling and typing. In a few instances, phone use was integrated into parent–child interactions. This most often occurred when parents used their phones to take photographs of their children. Typically, parents’ responses to their children were delayed or presented with a flat affect when their attention was divided. However, some parents seemed more adept at multitasking than others; they could, for example, maintain eye contact or even physical contact with their children while also typing on their phone screen. Additionally, parents may have verbally and nonverbally communicated with their children while being occupied with their mobile phones, though such communication was more fragmented than during instances of high engagement.
Disengagement
Heavy mobile phone use was associated with instances in which parents completely disengaged from their children. During our observations, we documented 15 families (25%) with parents who consistently demonstrated this pattern of behavior for the major part of the observation. While using a mobile phone, disengaged parents tended to be physically and emotionally distant from their children, thus creating situations of inattention in which they were unaware of their children’s behaviors and feelings. For example: A mother sat on a bench at the playground with her back to her preschool son, who was standing by the swings. The mother talked on her mobile phone and did not pay attention to her child. The son started to pull on one of the swings, then he yelled, “Mommy, I want to swing!” The mother did not respond and continued her phone conversation. The boy yelled, “Mommy, I want to swing!” five more times and his voice sounded more distressed and his face looked more concerned with each attempt. The mother kept her back to him and continued to talk on the phone. The son then walked over to his mother, grabbed her sleeve, and said, “Mommy, swings.” The mother got up from the bench and followed him, but she stayed on the phone and made little eye contact with her child as she did so. (BP, May 8, 2018)
Emotional unavailability was not exclusive to mobile device use. Some disengaged parents seemed disinterested in their children when not using their phones if, for example, they were involved in a conversation with another adult (e.g., a spouse or friend) or if they were occupied with another activity such as smoking a cigarette. However, compared to other distractions, mobile phone use corresponded to deeper levels of disengagement. Moreover, while behaviors associated with low engagement without mobile device use were similar to those that accompanied use (e.g., no eye contact, missing signs of children’s distress), parents’ attention was more easily regained when they were not using mobile devices.
Consequences of parental mobile phone use
Overall, the situations in which parents were fully or partially disengaged from their children while visiting the playground raise concerns related to children’s safety and their emotional well-being, as will be clarified in the following sections.
Safety concerns
Safety concerns were raised when a child was in a potential risky health or safety situation (e.g., instances in which children fell or attempted dangerous tricks like climbing up a steep slide while others were coming down) as a result of their parent’s detachment. Fifteen families (25%) included parents who did not pay attention to their children’s safety risk while using mobile devices, while 11 families (18%) included parents who were inattentive without mobile devices. On the other hand, only in two instances (7% of observed families) did parents effectively protect their children’s safety while using a phone, compared with 20 such instances (30% of families) without a device. An even more striking difference was found when we calculated all occasions of safety concerns that were associated with parental distraction (53 in total): 70% occurred when parents were distracted by their devices, in comparison with 30% related to other distractors.
While using phones during instances of safety concern, parents either had their heads down toward the screen or they spoke on the phone and faced away from their children. Most of these examples occurred during the low-engagement times, although some of the divided engagement also contributed to safety concerns. In most cases, children avoided harm due to luck (e.g., they did not get hit by others coming down the slide) or their own decision to exit a potentially dangerous situation (e.g., they did not try the tall monkey bars). When children were actually harmed, however, it was often their cries that made parents look up from their phones and pay attention. When children moved on and did not cry, their parents remained unaware of the safety concern altogether. For example: Throughout this 50-minute observation, a mother typed and scrolled frequently on her phone. During these instances, her three children, a preschool son and two toddlers (a daughter and a son) wandered off and entered into dangerous situations that they either helped each other out of or escaped fortuitously. For example, toddler son left his mother frequently and she often did not notice for a minute or two. Twice, the son left the mother and ran about 30 feet away through a ropes course where children were swinging and could have easily hit him in the head. Toward the end of the observation, the mother stood about 10 feet away from the child while he crawled into the base of a wide slide. The mother was typing and scrolling on her phone and she did not look up at her child. He remained at the bottom of the slide for about 5 minutes and was almost hit by many children when they came down. Other children yelled at him to move and twice his sister, who was around his size, had to drag him off the slide and onto the ground. The second time, she semidropped him and he started to cry as if in pain. The mother did not look up from her phone until another child yelled: “Come on baby, get away from the slide!” (KS, August 24, 2018)
In several instances, safety concerns were also raised while parents were distracted by other adults rather than mobile phones. However, parents more quickly refocused their attention and intervened in their children’s behavior to prevent actual harm when they were distracted by other factors as opposed to mobile phone use. For example, one mother was distracted by both her phone and her friends at different times during an observation. When she was typing, scrolling, and talking on her phone, she did not engage with her son at all, whereas when she was conversing with her friends, she called out to him when he tried to walk out of her line of sight (BP, May 24, 2018). This suggests that mobile phones may require deeper and/or more prolonged concentration than other distractions.
Emotional well-being concerns
While possible harm from safety concerns is quite obvious and immediate, potential negative implications of parents disregarding their children’s emotions and needs should not be neglected. Though these behaviors are less visible, they could have long-term effects on children’s healthy psychological development, especially given the young age of children observed for the study. In 31 families (52%), parents ignored their children’s emotional needs while using the mobile phone, in comparison with 17 families (28%) with parents distracted by other factors. On the other hand, only a minority of parents (12%) were able to offer proper emotional support while using a phone, compared with 55% of cases when parents were attentive without a phone. Likewise, a comparison of occasions of emotional concerns associated with parental phone use versus cases related to other distractors shows that a majority of them (72%) involved mobile phone use.
This form of technoference occurred when the parent ignored the child’s bids for attention, did not pay attention to the child’s emotional distress, or did not share the child’s positive feelings of accomplishment and joy. In other instances, parents reacted disproportionately to a given situation; for example, some parents made impatient and harsh gestures and comments that did not match the child’s emotional state, or made false promises during phone use (e.g., “I’ll be with you in a minute”). For example: The observation began with a mother sitting on a bench facing about 50 feet away from her toddler son, who was playing on the larger of two playgrounds with a friend. The son tried to engage the mother multiple times while she was typing and scrolling on her phone, and he received little response from her; she did not look up to make eye contact, nor did she provide any verbal recognition of his pleas for attention. In one instance about 10 minutes after the observation began, the mother walked many yards away from the playground toward a shady area outside of the son’s sight. When the son noticed her absence, he stood in the middle of the playground between the slides and swing sets. He started to cry and scream, “Mommy!,” then he started to ask other children where his mommy went. Other children did not answer, but some stared at him. The son was in distress for 6 minutes before the mother slowly walked back to the play area. She showed no signs of hearing or responding to the son’s cries. As soon as the son saw her reemerge, he continued to play. The mother then followed the son around for a few minutes while paying little attention to him; she looked down at her phone and typed and scrolled. Toward the end of the observation, the son tried to hold the mother’s hand and she dropped it seemingly to type on her phone while they walked to retrieve his stroller. (BP, May 25, 2018) The mother with the three children sat on a piece of equipment while she looked down at her phone and typed and scrolled. The toddler son was playing and came up behind her and gave her a hug. The mother did not reciprocate or visibly acknowledge him. A few minutes later, the boy climbed down on his own and went over to some weeds. He picked one, returned to his mother, and tried to give it to her. She had since stood up and he hit her on her leg (just above his eye level), ostensibly to get her attention. Again, the mother did not respond but instead continued to type and scroll on her phone. The child kept trying to give her the flower for about 30 seconds, after which point he gave up and walked away from her. (KS, August 24, 2018)
Instances raising emotional concerns typically resulted in children’s disappointment, frustration, or sadness. Regardless of age, most children were persistent in trying to obtain their parent’s attention and, when they did not receive it, their facial expressions and body language suggested defeat. A few children who seemed more outgoing turned elsewhere for attention, as the previous example demonstrates. Other children gave up and resumed their play. In those cases in which children did eventually capture their parents’ attention, parents did not seem remorseful. Instead, they acted as if their children had only just expressed a need for their attention, or they acted annoyed that their children distracted them from whatever they were doing, which made these interactions even more problematic in terms of their impact on the child’s emotional well-being (Harrist & Waugh, 2001).
Discussion and conclusion
This study systematically examined the various expressions of parental technoference during playground visits and its implications on parent–child interactional quality and children’s well-being. It benefitted from a method of unobtrusive observations in a natural surrounding that allowed us to bypass the need for self-reporting. First and foremost, our findings suggest that using mobile phones while accompanying children to the playground is a typical behavior of the majority of parents: 79% of the observed parents used their mobile phone at least once, while the total length of the usage was about a third of the entire time they spent in the playground. This is significantly higher than the results Hiniker et al. (2015) collected several years ago in the US (then 59% of parents used mobile phones in the playground), and on par with a more recent study by Mangan et al. (2018) conducted in Australia, where 76% of parents used mobile phones in the playground for 20% of the time they were observed. We can hypothesize, therefore, that as mobile phones become “smarter” and more deeply integrated into various aspects of our lives, we will be witnessing their growing presence in parent–child interactions during various outdoor family activities.
Most often, parents’ attentiveness toward their children peaked when their phones were not in use and plummeted when they typed, scrolled, and/or talked during extended periods of time. As a result, parents’ various distractions—most prominently, mobile phone use—and corresponding levels of engagement create a continuum along which parent–child interactions can be placed (see Figure 1).
Continuum of parents’ mobile use and levels of engagement in the playground setting.
Although mobile phones should not be targeted as the only source of parental distraction at playgrounds, they appear to be the most significant distractor whose use is associated with higher concentration and more prolonged inattention when compared to other distractions such as talking with other adults or reading print material. Accordingly, our findings demonstrate that most cases related to safety or emotional concerns occurred when parents were using a mobile phone. It is interesting to note that when both parents were present with the child in the playground, we often observed that parents would “switch” responsibility for who was watching their child(ren) and who was on the phone. However, we also observed situations where both parents were engrossed with their phones, and other situations where both parents were absorbed in conversation with each other and their engagement was mutually divided.
Parental technoference during playground visits raises concerns regarding children’s safety, emotional well-being, and development. On numerous occasions, children faced safety risks that were either unnoticed or slow to be noticed by parents. Additionally, disengaged and, often, divided-engagement parents were not available for their children when they wanted to share their accomplishments, were in need of emotional support, or required scaffolding. Thus, observations suggest that children’s safety and emotional needs are more often at risk when parents use their phones than when they are distracted by other factors.
Moreover, we should remember that visits to playgrounds challenge children with experiences in which they may acquire significant social skills such as patience, restraint, collaboration, turn-taking, and courtesy (Sluckin, 1981). In these situations, parents’ involvement is especially important, as parents could use such socializing opportunities to teach their children something new or to reinforce desirable behavior. Accordingly, when parents were engaged with their mobile device, they usually missed opportunities to reinforce the child’s normative behaviors and ignored the child’s nonnormative behaviors.
This is not to say, however, that all parents demonstrated concerning behaviors. Using the same previous criteria, we found examples of parents guarding their children’s safety and providing emotional support, though these behaviors most often occurred when parents were not using their mobile devices. While not using a mobile phone, parents were much more frequently maintaining eye contact with their child, complimenting them for overcoming challenges, supporting their collaborative behaviors with other children, responding to their bids for attention in an appropriate manner, intervening to stop dangerous or nonnormative behaviors, talking to their child, and showing affection in the form of a hug, kiss, or caress.
Our findings also suggest that some parents who displayed divided engagement were able to remain digitally connected without ignoring their children. These parents were able to manage the two tasks (caring for their children and using their mobile phones) by limiting phone time, putting the phone aside during engagement in joint activities, limiting multitasking through controlled divided attention, etc. Therefore, engaged parents need not to be totally precluded from mobile phone use, but may find that positive interactions occur when they are more focused on their children rather than their devices.
It is important to emphasize that we are not advocating for a “helicoptering,” overprotective parenting approach to child-rearing. Children need to be able to develop independence, resilience, and ability to delay gratifications. It is entirely appropriate for parents to be engaged in activities that do not put the child in the center of their attention at every single moment in the playground visit. Yet, at the same time, we are also concerned about the possibility of dismissing, or even celebrating, too much of “underparenting.” When parents constantly ignore their children’s needs, refrain from interacting with and scaffolding them, and are entirely disconnected from what is happening around them while immersed in their virtual worlds for long stretches of time, their children are put in a developmental disadvantage.
Our study is not without limitations. Based entirely on short-term observational data with a limited sample of anonymous families, we cannot make any claims for causal relations between mobile phone use and parenting style, nor can we draw any conclusions why certain parents tend to use their mobile phone for longer periods whereas others are more attuned to their children. Likewise, it is impossible to ascertain whether the parental behaviors related to children’s safety or emotional concerns are typical of the observed individuals or outstanding. More comprehensive observations of families over a variety of settings, as well as complementary interviews, will provide more robust findings. The second phase of this project is designed to accomplish this task by following a sample of families for several days across contexts and situations and supplementing the observations with in-depth interviews. We hope that the data collected in this second phase will get us closer to determining whether it is low-engagement parents who are more prone to be distracted by their phones, whether phones distract even highly engaged parents from attending to their children, or perhaps both.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Prof. Naama Atzaba-Poria at Ben Gurion University of the Negev for her training in the theory and practice of emotional availability, and Dan Delmonaco, a graduate student at Rutgers University for his research assistance.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel.
