10 ms·

Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

173 points by hbcondo714 2mo ago

paytonjjones 2mo ago
This is a weak study that is exemplary of psychology's weak experimentation culture and correlation/causation laundering, especially with regard to self-report. The heavily hinted implication is that device use damages relationships. But look at what they actually measured. They ask adolescents to answer questions like: "My primary caregiver ignores me when they are on a device." (DAIS, their new scale) And then also ask them to answer questions like: "I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me." (ECR-RS) And then act like it's a revelation that these two self-report scales are correlated. A much more plausible causal explanation is that a single psychological variable (e.g. a bad relationship) causes both self reports, rather than the implied pathway that device use causes A, which then causes B.
- tangenter 2mo ago
  My dude, I don’t know how to explain this to you but phones and computers are addictive for people. They get hooked on them to feed the lizard brain with digital junk food engineered for engagement.
  - Groxx 2mo ago
    Manipulating "studies" doesn't help reveal how true this is (or even if it is, do we perhaps have an inherent level of addiction and phones are just an easy target?), nor help find effective ways to reduce it.
  - etrautmann 2mo ago
    That’s irrelevant to the issue with the study that the parent identified.
- irjustin 2mo ago
  I largely agree this is a weak study, but it also feels like no matter how you run this study it's going to be flawed. Parent-child interactions, relationships, feelings are probably the hardest thing to quantify at any scale. In the end, it's really, "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.
  - paytonjjones 2mo ago
    A better version of this study would be to run an experiment where you take away (or heavily restrict) parental phone access over a month or two and measure the parent-child relationship vs. a control group. > "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across. I wouldn't be too sure of that actually: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/the-secret-to-parenting-do-less-of-it/ https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/the-secret-to-parenting-...
  - makeitdouble 2mo ago
    There is always a question of whether a bad study is better than no study. I think weak studies validating people's natural intuitions tend to do more damage than we give them credit for. Even if another better d signed study does way more work and comes with clear results that disprove the natural intuiton, it will be buried in the sea of low effort studies and people will already have settle the issue in their minds as "proven by science".
    - somenameforme 2mo ago
      100%. I completely agree with this study's 'findings' but also agree the study is garbage. So many studies now a days have experiments designed to confirm a hypothesis instead of challenge it. They should be doing everything possible they can to disprove their hypothesis and only accept it after all attempts at falsification fail. But of course that's in idealized science. In reality, publish or perish means you need to get something published and negative results don't get published. And so this study, like what seems to be most now a days, is designed to prove their hypothesis - which ironically proves nothing.
- twnettytwo 2mo ago
  IMO this isn't necessarily bad (it's one way to get data), but the numbers are meaningless without a control. Unfortunately, I think we missed that bus by ~20 years. Had the same study been conducted every few years over the last two decades, I think it would have been valuable. Maybe it is still valuable to do this once every few years? (I think that everyone in 2026 is maximally addicted to mobile phones, but maybe I'm wrong and it can get worse).
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- tgv 2mo ago
  > A much more plausible causal explanation Why is that much more plausible? It implies that it has always been there, and that nothing has changed since the last century, which is unlikely. Unless you want to introduce some other recent factor, but that is going to be even less likely. And why? Because other studies have shown how addictive "phone" use is, and how it isolates people. And addicts (drugs, alcohol) are bad caretakers. So there's really nothing that makes the explanation implausible. You may ask yourself if it's not your own addiction speaking.
  - paytonjjones 2mo ago
    I find it more plausible given my priors as a research psychologist. Correlational overlap between self-report scales is common. It's actually so common that at decent sample sizes, almost any arbitrary self-report will significantly correlate purely on valence. For instance, one should expect a correlation between people self-reporting "I had a tough childhood" with "I frequently suffer from skin rashes". This is because trait neuroticism (the degree to which people are prone to feel negative emotion) is a major driver of how people interpret and respond to scales generally. In contrast, psychologists mightily struggle to find replicable experimental results. That's what you need here.
    - tgv 2mo ago
      I know survey data is weak. I think you'll find that 95% of all psychological research is bad. But your explanation isn't "much more plausible". It is based on absolutely nothing, and the priori are against it. You only have a vague idea of correlation between answers (based on probably equally unreliable papers), but nothing on the missing factor. In this paper, however, they at least take some effort to find structure in the responses, and this factor correlated stronger than the others. Shaky, but it has a basis: phones/social media/etc. are terribly addictive. > In contrast, psychologists mightily struggle to find replicable experimental results. That's what you need here. No, that's not needed here. The paper might not be good, but we need to get rid of the phones. It's obvious that it's a problem. Just try to take someone's phone away. What "we" do not need here is distraction from the problem.
- magicalhippo 2mo ago
  To be fair they do kinda spell this out in the discussion section: This study does not come without limitations. First, it is important to recognize that the present findings are correlational and cross-sectional in nature and therefore do not permit conclusions regarding directionality or causality. Although caregiver device-centric behaviors and adolescent attachment insecurity were robustly associated, it remains unclear whether perceived caregiver distraction is related to attachment insecurity, whether adolescents with higher levels of attachment insecurity are more likely to perceive caregiver behavior as inattentive or disruptive (i.e., reverse causality), or whether both reflect other unmeasured contextual or relational factors. Second, several of the DAIS items assess emotional reactions, which could conceptually overlap with anxious attachment. Thus, the relationship between the DAIS and ECR may reflect a partial overlap of the constructs. Third, both the DAIS and ECR-RS are self-reported measures at a single time point, which may have shared method variance. [...] I definitely think some people get addicted to the phones, and that addiction is negative for the relationship with the child. I also think one can be active on a phone while also being attentive and available to the child, which would be less problematic for the relationship. I also don't think the phone is new in this regard. I've certainly heard many stories from back in the days about parents being glued to the TV or work and not being attentive to their child. It's even the point of the quite well known song Cat's in the Cradle[1]. The main difference I guess is that the phone is so prevalent in the population, and there are a lot of apps and sites that are engineered to grab your attention. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_in_the_Cradle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_in_the_Cradle
whatever1 2mo ago
Yes son. Go back to your iPad.
Wolfenstein98k 2mo ago
I would expect anxious/insecure parents to use placating behaviours (like device use) themselves, and I would expect their children to be anxious/insecure too. So I would expect the study to find that the children of phone-overusers were more likely to be anxious/insecure. Still, I would also expect that less phone use (subbed with more attention to kid) would help the kid with this.
- interludead 2mo ago
  I can easily imagine the phone use and the kid's insecurity both coming from the same underlying family dynamic, rather than one neatly causing the other
Aeolun 2mo ago
This tracks with my son’s observations on my wife’s phone use. She’ll tell him to stop watching youtube, then go right back to doing so herself. It doesn’t really seem to compute how hypocritical that is.
- scotty79 2mo ago
  About as much as telling your kid to not drink beer while you are doing it yourself.
  - Gigachad 2mo ago
    Aside from the physical/chemical damage alcohol does to developing brains, alcohol addiction is bad for adults too. We just concede that after childhood you can make your own choice to ruin your life. Phone addiction is harmful to everyone at all age groups. It's not really the individuals to blame through. The tech companies have broken human psychology and developed something more addictive than drugs.
    - dizlexic 2mo ago
      Spoken like someone who hasn't really done drugs.
      - jb1991 2mo ago
        Numerous studies have supported this thesis, that phone addiction is identical to a chemical addiction.
        acessoproibido 2mo ago
        5% of all deaths worldwide can be attributed to alcohol. Phone addiction is not identical. In some aspects its similar but in most others not.
        philipallstar 2mo ago
shareholderzero 2mo ago
[dead]
godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
I often wonder why even today with falling birthrates so many people have kids. It's a personal decision, so not something you would randomly bring up with strangers and not something one really thinks to discuss with friends until someone has a kid. Once they are on the path to question it would be rude. But it strikes me that many parents don't really think about it that much, as in the original rationale. I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this. What choice could be more significant? Then again, maybe the personal nature of it means one is simply not aware of what other people are going through. Maybe everyone is really thinking it through. I am led to doubt it though. I'm curious if other people have had the chance to ask their own parents and felt satisfied by the results. That might be one of the few occasions you might have hope for a somewhat revealing answer. I've found this notion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism somewhat interesting in this regard.
- andsoitis 2mo ago
  > why so many people have kids Biology / evolution. The drive to reproduce is baked in by natural selection. Organisms that didn’t want offspring didn’t pass on genes.
  - mikestorrent 2mo ago
    Sounds like an answer from a non-parent, honestly. There's a lot more to it than that, and virtually every couple I know with children thought about it a lot before going ahead. The number one reason is because they see other families and the love and joy that their children bring into their lives. This is inspiring, and brings people around to making the decision, even if they know the sacrifices they will have to make. Boiling it all down to pure biology is stripping parents of agency to fit your worldview.
    - sevenzero 2mo ago
      So they have kids for their personal joy and completely ignore if their kids even have a chance of a good future, got it. I am sad when I see what kids will be confronted with in the long term. Humans nowadays already cant cope with climate change and wars, this will only be multiplied tenfold for our kids.
kqr 2mo ago
This can be tricky. I know my mother loves me unconditionally, but I also have strong memories of her shutting herself inside her study to read textbooks and journals, and children were not allowed to disturb unless she was strictly needed to handle an accident. I have the same need for cognition as my mother, but I opt not to lock myself in my office. Instead I tell my kids, "I'm around if you need me and I'll keep an eye on you but I'm not currently a playmate; I'll be here reading on my phone." The difference is my mother clearly separated relationship-building from study. I don't. This probably means I'm available more often, but with lower quality? I'm not sure. What is better? No idea.
- conductr 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - andai 2mo ago
    My mom was always distracted so that's mostly how I remember her. We have all kinds of wonderful memories together but, what I think of her, the first thing that comes her mind is, her being in the same room as me but ignoring me.
  - apsurd 2mo ago
    +1 as adults we intellectualize way too much what kids are reasoning… they aren’t reasoning! they aren’t fully developed. it’s literally not that deep to them. every year that passes, the idea of the only personal time one has is in the bathroom on the toilet hits harder and harder. there’s a whole back catalog of jokes about this; hiding in the bathroom, talking extra long. yep, checks out.
  - neuroticnews25 2mo ago
    Are you supposed to allocate 100% of your free time to your kids?
    - conductr 2mo ago
      No. But from a very early age they can tell when you’re truly preoccupied versus opting to ignore them. And it has an effect on your relationship and how they’ll remember your presence as a parent. Framing it goes a long way, “I have to clean the garage, then we can go swimming or play a game”. You’re telling them about something you have to do that they won’t be interested in, then offering up something positive. Much different than, “I’m here, staring at my phone, bother me if you must”. Also, these things go away soon enough. They won’t want you as a playmate anymore. During these early childhood years, I do my reading and alone time activities after bedtime. Nothing wrong with having an early bedtime just to reserve it for this purpose. I’m not a pro parent by any means but these thoughts are certainly based on my parenting philosophy. I actively try to engage as much as possible even to the detriment of my personal hobbies and interests because while they want to engage, I want to be present.
jb1991 2mo ago
I would love to get rid of my smartphone altogether, actually. I’m just not quite sure how to do it. I need to use a map app often. And most of the announcements and services in my country from companies and schools are all handled through WhatsApp. So it makes it a bit difficult to cut that tether.
- dybber 2mo ago
  Maybe the new Commodore flip phone? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552614
  - jb1991 2mo ago
    That would be promising if it wasn’t for a ridiculous price tag. You shouldn’t have to pay a premium just to have features removed. The margin on that phone must be incredibly high.
- KeplerBoy 2mo ago
  Getting a tiny phone not meant for media consumption is probably the closest you can achieve. You are not going to waste a lot of time watching youtube on a 3" screen, because that's just no fun. The "jelly star" phone looks kind of fun. I just sat in a busy tram and wondered what the scene would look like if we all had phones like that. It's an innteresting thought experiment.
  - jb1991 2mo ago
    Well I remember the days before the first smart phone and taking subways in New York City, so it’s not too hard for me to imagine. People reading books, talking to each other, very different.
    - tomatocracy 2mo ago
      Maybe it's a cultural difference but I remember before smartphones on the tube in London as well and noone talked to each other during the morning/evening commute. I think the biggest difference is actually the lack of newspapers now. Plenty of people were plugged into headphones via iPod/Walkman/whatever was era appropriate. The people who stare at their phones today were staring at newspapers in the pre smartphone era.
olafmol 2mo ago
Now it's smartphones and devices, but in the past it was work. Personally I think these days kids get a lot more attention from their parents than anytime in the past. Even so much that it can be irritating/damaging (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).
- socalgal2 2mo ago
  > (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents). That seems like a cultural thing to me. It's common in some countries for daughters ~15yrs to ~40yrs to claim their best friend is their mom.
  - cpursley 2mo ago
    I don't think you understood what op meant. There's a difference between a child saying this and parenting style.
- coldest_summer 2mo ago
  Beware the helicopters. Give kids the freedom to make mistakes and suffer the (nonfatal, no loss of life or limb) consequences. Yes, there are cases to intervene, but generally, you should let your kids hurt themselves more. Pain is a very important form of learning. By overprotecting them, they become very vulnerable adults, then worse things happen.
  - 21asdffdsa12 2mo ago
    They also become dysfunctional adults, needing a replacement parent, when the parent disappears- which is mostly the state, sometimes a company - and always a example for stunted individual growth.
  - paulryanrogers 2mo ago
    > you should let your kids hurt themselves more This is quite presumptuous. Even minor injuries can add up to long term damage. We don't need to keep our kids inside or wrapped in crazy layers to protect them. We also don't need them to get hurt a lot for them to learn what's good or bad.
emil-lp 2mo ago
A heads-up: Frontiers In is a publisher known to have extremely low quality.
marcus_holmes 2mo ago
We should propose a ban on parental social media accounts in Australia, since it's proven to do harm to children.
- dools 2mo ago
  I actually think we should extend the social media ban to anyone under 90
30minAdayHN 2mo ago
I was getting effected by the "technoference". A few friends when visiting us at our home, are being on phones, scrolling and engaging. I decided to buy a box. Any time friends visit us, they should drop their phones in that box and pick them up while leaving.
xg15 2mo ago
The attention economy is a resource extraction industry. It'll claw out any bit of attention it can get and sell it, even if that attention would be needed elsewhere.
JauntyHatAngle 2mo ago
I find these studies specifically frustrating because they don't answer the most interesting question - is it damaging if your caregiver uses phone a lot but remains responsive. This study specifically excludes it, and fair enough when being honest about the statistical inference and not overreaching, but that is the question I find most interesting as someone who uses my phone to get away from my desk but keep work going so I can spend time with my kids while doing my job. One outcome would be this is damaging and worse than just not spending time until after work, the other result would say this is a beneficial arrangement.
- Obscurity4340 2mo ago
  How do your kids feel abot it or have they expressed any frustration with your divided attention?
  - halfmatthalfcat 2mo ago
    Moreso they are interested in the phone because we are but I don't necessary sense frustration. Especially if you are "attentive" in that you are willing to context switch back to your kids immediately, I think they see it as another "thing" like a toy or some distraction outside.
  - JauntyHatAngle 2mo ago
    It's not always obvious but the bit that is clear is it's hard to delineate "dad is working so don't interrupt him" for on-call incidents etc vs "dad is looking at cat videos". They look the same and it's pretty clearly confusing because it's a malleable boundary. In terms of attention I actually find it pretty easy to identify their cues even when on my phone. It's more of a general feel of how much I've played with them vs solo play and when they want to hang out they will walk over and make it clear. Plus you are always watching them.
- watwut 2mo ago
  If you use the phone a lot, you are not generating any initiative on your own and are not reponsive to small initiations you dont notice. You are responsive to when kid explicitely comes to you. Or otherwise said, if you are on the phone a lot, you are creating a barrier to interaction and people (both kids and adults) will eventually end up tired of trying and having less reciprocation. If you are not physically there, it is actually less frustrating to others then if you create a barrier while being there.
AtroGi 2mo ago
[flagged]
interludead 2mo ago
Being ignored because someone is staring at a phone absolutely feels different from them just being busy. At the same time, asking teenagers how much their parent's phone use bothers them and then finding that the most bothered teenagers feel less secure in the relationship is not quite the same as showing that the phone caused the insecurity

173 points by hbcondo714 2mo ago

This is a weak study that is exemplary of psychology's weak experimentation culture and correlation/causation laundering, especially with regard to self-report. The heavily hinted implication is that device use damages relationships. But look at what they actually measured. They ask adolescents to answer questions like: "My primary caregiver ignores me when they are on a device." (DAIS, their new scale) And then also ask them to answer questions like: "I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me." (ECR-RS) And then act like it's a revelation that these two self-report scales are correlated. A much more plausible causal explanation is that a single psychological variable (e.g. a bad relationship) causes both self reports, rather than the implied pathway that device use causes A, which then causes B.

tangenter 2mo ago
My dude, I don’t know how to explain this to you but phones and computers are addictive for people. They get hooked on them to feed the lizard brain with digital junk food engineered for engagement.
- Groxx 2mo ago
  Manipulating "studies" doesn't help reveal how true this is (or even if it is, do we perhaps have an inherent level of addiction and phones are just an easy target?), nor help find effective ways to reduce it.
- etrautmann 2mo ago
  That’s irrelevant to the issue with the study that the parent identified.
irjustin 2mo ago
I largely agree this is a weak study, but it also feels like no matter how you run this study it's going to be flawed. Parent-child interactions, relationships, feelings are probably the hardest thing to quantify at any scale. In the end, it's really, "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.
- paytonjjones 2mo ago
  A better version of this study would be to run an experiment where you take away (or heavily restrict) parental phone access over a month or two and measure the parent-child relationship vs. a control group. > "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across. I wouldn't be too sure of that actually: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/the-secret-to-parenting-do-less-of-it/ https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/the-secret-to-parenting-...
- makeitdouble 2mo ago
  There is always a question of whether a bad study is better than no study. I think weak studies validating people's natural intuitions tend to do more damage than we give them credit for. Even if another better d signed study does way more work and comes with clear results that disprove the natural intuiton, it will be buried in the sea of low effort studies and people will already have settle the issue in their minds as "proven by science".
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    100%. I completely agree with this study's 'findings' but also agree the study is garbage. So many studies now a days have experiments designed to confirm a hypothesis instead of challenge it. They should be doing everything possible they can to disprove their hypothesis and only accept it after all attempts at falsification fail. But of course that's in idealized science. In reality, publish or perish means you need to get something published and negative results don't get published. And so this study, like what seems to be most now a days, is designed to prove their hypothesis - which ironically proves nothing.
twnettytwo 2mo ago
IMO this isn't necessarily bad (it's one way to get data), but the numbers are meaningless without a control. Unfortunately, I think we missed that bus by ~20 years. Had the same study been conducted every few years over the last two decades, I think it would have been valuable. Maybe it is still valuable to do this once every few years? (I think that everyone in 2026 is maximally addicted to mobile phones, but maybe I'm wrong and it can get worse).
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
tgv 2mo ago
> A much more plausible causal explanation Why is that much more plausible? It implies that it has always been there, and that nothing has changed since the last century, which is unlikely. Unless you want to introduce some other recent factor, but that is going to be even less likely. And why? Because other studies have shown how addictive "phone" use is, and how it isolates people. And addicts (drugs, alcohol) are bad caretakers. So there's really nothing that makes the explanation implausible. You may ask yourself if it's not your own addiction speaking.
- paytonjjones 2mo ago
  I find it more plausible given my priors as a research psychologist. Correlational overlap between self-report scales is common. It's actually so common that at decent sample sizes, almost any arbitrary self-report will significantly correlate purely on valence. For instance, one should expect a correlation between people self-reporting "I had a tough childhood" with "I frequently suffer from skin rashes". This is because trait neuroticism (the degree to which people are prone to feel negative emotion) is a major driver of how people interpret and respond to scales generally. In contrast, psychologists mightily struggle to find replicable experimental results. That's what you need here.
  - tgv 2mo ago
    I know survey data is weak. I think you'll find that 95% of all psychological research is bad. But your explanation isn't "much more plausible". It is based on absolutely nothing, and the priori are against it. You only have a vague idea of correlation between answers (based on probably equally unreliable papers), but nothing on the missing factor. In this paper, however, they at least take some effort to find structure in the responses, and this factor correlated stronger than the others. Shaky, but it has a basis: phones/social media/etc. are terribly addictive. > In contrast, psychologists mightily struggle to find replicable experimental results. That's what you need here. No, that's not needed here. The paper might not be good, but we need to get rid of the phones. It's obvious that it's a problem. Just try to take someone's phone away. What "we" do not need here is distraction from the problem.
magicalhippo 2mo ago
To be fair they do kinda spell this out in the discussion section: This study does not come without limitations. First, it is important to recognize that the present findings are correlational and cross-sectional in nature and therefore do not permit conclusions regarding directionality or causality. Although caregiver device-centric behaviors and adolescent attachment insecurity were robustly associated, it remains unclear whether perceived caregiver distraction is related to attachment insecurity, whether adolescents with higher levels of attachment insecurity are more likely to perceive caregiver behavior as inattentive or disruptive (i.e., reverse causality), or whether both reflect other unmeasured contextual or relational factors. Second, several of the DAIS items assess emotional reactions, which could conceptually overlap with anxious attachment. Thus, the relationship between the DAIS and ECR may reflect a partial overlap of the constructs. Third, both the DAIS and ECR-RS are self-reported measures at a single time point, which may have shared method variance. [...] I definitely think some people get addicted to the phones, and that addiction is negative for the relationship with the child. I also think one can be active on a phone while also being attentive and available to the child, which would be less problematic for the relationship. I also don't think the phone is new in this regard. I've certainly heard many stories from back in the days about parents being glued to the TV or work and not being attentive to their child. It's even the point of the quite well known song Cat's in the Cradle[1]. The main difference I guess is that the phone is so prevalent in the population, and there are a lot of apps and sites that are engineered to grab your attention. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_in_the_Cradle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_in_the_Cradle

whatever1 2mo ago

Yes son. Go back to your iPad.

Wolfenstein98k 2mo ago

I would expect anxious/insecure parents to use placating behaviours (like device use) themselves, and I would expect their children to be anxious/insecure too. So I would expect the study to find that the children of phone-overusers were more likely to be anxious/insecure. Still, I would also expect that less phone use (subbed with more attention to kid) would help the kid with this.

interludead 2mo ago
I can easily imagine the phone use and the kid's insecurity both coming from the same underlying family dynamic, rather than one neatly causing the other

Aeolun 2mo ago

This tracks with my son’s observations on my wife’s phone use. She’ll tell him to stop watching youtube, then go right back to doing so herself. It doesn’t really seem to compute how hypocritical that is.

scotty79 2mo ago
About as much as telling your kid to not drink beer while you are doing it yourself.
- Gigachad 2mo ago
  Aside from the physical/chemical damage alcohol does to developing brains, alcohol addiction is bad for adults too. We just concede that after childhood you can make your own choice to ruin your life. Phone addiction is harmful to everyone at all age groups. It's not really the individuals to blame through. The tech companies have broken human psychology and developed something more addictive than drugs.
  - dizlexic 2mo ago
    Spoken like someone who hasn't really done drugs.
    - jb1991 2mo ago
      Numerous studies have supported this thesis, that phone addiction is identical to a chemical addiction.
      - acessoproibido 2mo ago
        5% of all deaths worldwide can be attributed to alcohol. Phone addiction is not identical. In some aspects its similar but in most others not.
        philipallstar 2mo ago

shareholderzero 2mo ago

[dead]

godwinson__4-8 2mo ago

I often wonder why even today with falling birthrates so many people have kids. It's a personal decision, so not something you would randomly bring up with strangers and not something one really thinks to discuss with friends until someone has a kid. Once they are on the path to question it would be rude. But it strikes me that many parents don't really think about it that much, as in the original rationale. I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this. What choice could be more significant? Then again, maybe the personal nature of it means one is simply not aware of what other people are going through. Maybe everyone is really thinking it through. I am led to doubt it though. I'm curious if other people have had the chance to ask their own parents and felt satisfied by the results. That might be one of the few occasions you might have hope for a somewhat revealing answer. I've found this notion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism somewhat interesting in this regard.

andsoitis 2mo ago
> why so many people have kids Biology / evolution. The drive to reproduce is baked in by natural selection. Organisms that didn’t want offspring didn’t pass on genes.
- mikestorrent 2mo ago
  Sounds like an answer from a non-parent, honestly. There's a lot more to it than that, and virtually every couple I know with children thought about it a lot before going ahead. The number one reason is because they see other families and the love and joy that their children bring into their lives. This is inspiring, and brings people around to making the decision, even if they know the sacrifices they will have to make. Boiling it all down to pure biology is stripping parents of agency to fit your worldview.
  - sevenzero 2mo ago
    So they have kids for their personal joy and completely ignore if their kids even have a chance of a good future, got it. I am sad when I see what kids will be confronted with in the long term. Humans nowadays already cant cope with climate change and wars, this will only be multiplied tenfold for our kids.

kqr 2mo ago

This can be tricky. I know my mother loves me unconditionally, but I also have strong memories of her shutting herself inside her study to read textbooks and journals, and children were not allowed to disturb unless she was strictly needed to handle an accident. I have the same need for cognition as my mother, but I opt not to lock myself in my office. Instead I tell my kids, "I'm around if you need me and I'll keep an eye on you but I'm not currently a playmate; I'll be here reading on my phone." The difference is my mother clearly separated relationship-building from study. I don't. This probably means I'm available more often, but with lower quality? I'm not sure. What is better? No idea.

conductr 2mo ago
[flagged]
- andai 2mo ago
  My mom was always distracted so that's mostly how I remember her. We have all kinds of wonderful memories together but, what I think of her, the first thing that comes her mind is, her being in the same room as me but ignoring me.
- apsurd 2mo ago
  +1 as adults we intellectualize way too much what kids are reasoning… they aren’t reasoning! they aren’t fully developed. it’s literally not that deep to them. every year that passes, the idea of the only personal time one has is in the bathroom on the toilet hits harder and harder. there’s a whole back catalog of jokes about this; hiding in the bathroom, talking extra long. yep, checks out.
- neuroticnews25 2mo ago
  Are you supposed to allocate 100% of your free time to your kids?
  - conductr 2mo ago
    No. But from a very early age they can tell when you’re truly preoccupied versus opting to ignore them. And it has an effect on your relationship and how they’ll remember your presence as a parent. Framing it goes a long way, “I have to clean the garage, then we can go swimming or play a game”. You’re telling them about something you have to do that they won’t be interested in, then offering up something positive. Much different than, “I’m here, staring at my phone, bother me if you must”. Also, these things go away soon enough. They won’t want you as a playmate anymore. During these early childhood years, I do my reading and alone time activities after bedtime. Nothing wrong with having an early bedtime just to reserve it for this purpose. I’m not a pro parent by any means but these thoughts are certainly based on my parenting philosophy. I actively try to engage as much as possible even to the detriment of my personal hobbies and interests because while they want to engage, I want to be present.

jb1991 2mo ago

I would love to get rid of my smartphone altogether, actually. I’m just not quite sure how to do it. I need to use a map app often. And most of the announcements and services in my country from companies and schools are all handled through WhatsApp. So it makes it a bit difficult to cut that tether.

dybber 2mo ago
Maybe the new Commodore flip phone? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552614
- jb1991 2mo ago
  That would be promising if it wasn’t for a ridiculous price tag. You shouldn’t have to pay a premium just to have features removed. The margin on that phone must be incredibly high.
KeplerBoy 2mo ago
Getting a tiny phone not meant for media consumption is probably the closest you can achieve. You are not going to waste a lot of time watching youtube on a 3" screen, because that's just no fun. The "jelly star" phone looks kind of fun. I just sat in a busy tram and wondered what the scene would look like if we all had phones like that. It's an innteresting thought experiment.
- jb1991 2mo ago
  Well I remember the days before the first smart phone and taking subways in New York City, so it’s not too hard for me to imagine. People reading books, talking to each other, very different.
  - tomatocracy 2mo ago
    Maybe it's a cultural difference but I remember before smartphones on the tube in London as well and noone talked to each other during the morning/evening commute. I think the biggest difference is actually the lack of newspapers now. Plenty of people were plugged into headphones via iPod/Walkman/whatever was era appropriate. The people who stare at their phones today were staring at newspapers in the pre smartphone era.

olafmol 2mo ago

Now it's smartphones and devices, but in the past it was work. Personally I think these days kids get a lot more attention from their parents than anytime in the past. Even so much that it can be irritating/damaging (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).

socalgal2 2mo ago
> (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents). That seems like a cultural thing to me. It's common in some countries for daughters ~15yrs to ~40yrs to claim their best friend is their mom.
- cpursley 2mo ago
  I don't think you understood what op meant. There's a difference between a child saying this and parenting style.
coldest_summer 2mo ago
Beware the helicopters. Give kids the freedom to make mistakes and suffer the (nonfatal, no loss of life or limb) consequences. Yes, there are cases to intervene, but generally, you should let your kids hurt themselves more. Pain is a very important form of learning. By overprotecting them, they become very vulnerable adults, then worse things happen.
- 21asdffdsa12 2mo ago
  They also become dysfunctional adults, needing a replacement parent, when the parent disappears- which is mostly the state, sometimes a company - and always a example for stunted individual growth.
- paulryanrogers 2mo ago
  > you should let your kids hurt themselves more This is quite presumptuous. Even minor injuries can add up to long term damage. We don't need to keep our kids inside or wrapped in crazy layers to protect them. We also don't need them to get hurt a lot for them to learn what's good or bad.

emil-lp 2mo ago

A heads-up: Frontiers In is a publisher known to have extremely low quality.

marcus_holmes 2mo ago

We should propose a ban on parental social media accounts in Australia, since it's proven to do harm to children.

dools 2mo ago
I actually think we should extend the social media ban to anyone under 90

30minAdayHN 2mo ago

I was getting effected by the "technoference". A few friends when visiting us at our home, are being on phones, scrolling and engaging. I decided to buy a box. Any time friends visit us, they should drop their phones in that box and pick them up while leaving.

xg15 2mo ago

The attention economy is a resource extraction industry. It'll claw out any bit of attention it can get and sell it, even if that attention would be needed elsewhere.

JauntyHatAngle 2mo ago

I find these studies specifically frustrating because they don't answer the most interesting question - is it damaging if your caregiver uses phone a lot but remains responsive. This study specifically excludes it, and fair enough when being honest about the statistical inference and not overreaching, but that is the question I find most interesting as someone who uses my phone to get away from my desk but keep work going so I can spend time with my kids while doing my job. One outcome would be this is damaging and worse than just not spending time until after work, the other result would say this is a beneficial arrangement.

Obscurity4340 2mo ago
How do your kids feel abot it or have they expressed any frustration with your divided attention?
- halfmatthalfcat 2mo ago
  Moreso they are interested in the phone because we are but I don't necessary sense frustration. Especially if you are "attentive" in that you are willing to context switch back to your kids immediately, I think they see it as another "thing" like a toy or some distraction outside.
- JauntyHatAngle 2mo ago
  It's not always obvious but the bit that is clear is it's hard to delineate "dad is working so don't interrupt him" for on-call incidents etc vs "dad is looking at cat videos". They look the same and it's pretty clearly confusing because it's a malleable boundary. In terms of attention I actually find it pretty easy to identify their cues even when on my phone. It's more of a general feel of how much I've played with them vs solo play and when they want to hang out they will walk over and make it clear. Plus you are always watching them.
watwut 2mo ago
If you use the phone a lot, you are not generating any initiative on your own and are not reponsive to small initiations you dont notice. You are responsive to when kid explicitely comes to you. Or otherwise said, if you are on the phone a lot, you are creating a barrier to interaction and people (both kids and adults) will eventually end up tired of trying and having less reciprocation. If you are not physically there, it is actually less frustrating to others then if you create a barrier while being there.

AtroGi 2mo ago

[flagged]

interludead 2mo ago

Being ignored because someone is staring at a phone absolutely feels different from them just being busy. At the same time, asking teenagers how much their parent's phone use bothers them and then finding that the most bothered teenagers feel less secure in the relationship is not quite the same as showing that the phone caused the insecurity