Meta’s landmark $18 billion settlement last month will finally set a limit on how teens use social media. That’s an acknowledgment of the addictive nature of Meta’s products and a crucial step toward holding tech companies accountable for the harms they inflict on young people.
But constant device use isn’t just a problem for teens. Recent research shows that parents, too, need to be aware of how their own screen habits could interfere with their children’s emotional well-being.
Don Grant, a psychologist who counsels teens on media use, was inspired to conduct the study after his clients started telling him about their parents’ problematic device use. “I may be bad with this, but my parents are worse,” they would tell him.
The kids explained that while they weren’t allowed to bring devices to the dinner table, their parents would scroll through their phones under the guise of “work.” Parents would also show up at baseball games and dance recitals but remain fixated on their screens. “[The kids] would tell me about how they feel marginalized and ignored,” Grant said.
He and his colleagues decided to study how parental tech use might affect attachment, the bond between children and their caregivers that helps shape emotional development and future relationships. “Secure attachment gives a child resiliency, confidence, self-esteem and the ability to navigate interpersonal relationships better,” he said. By contrast, insecure attachment is associated with difficulty trusting others, problems forming healthy relationships and a greater risk of mental health problems such as anxiety.
The study did not examine how much time parents spent on screens but rather how frequently teens perceived their primary caregiver as distracted by phones and other devices. This kind of interference is so commonplace that researchers have developed terms for it, like “technoference,” when technology disrupts interactions, and “phubbing,” or snubbing someone in favor of your phone.
Another relevant term: “absent presence.” That’s being physically in the same place but mentally elsewhere, absorbed in a device. Grant says he sees this all the time at playgrounds, restaurants and school events. “The kid’s trying to get their attention, and the parents are ignoring them,” he said.
To test whether this phenomenon might affect the parent-child bond, Grant and his colleagues surveyed 600 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. They asked how frequently teens felt their primary caregivers were distracted by devices — for instance, focusing on a phone during family conversations or making kids feel they were competing with a smartphone for attention.
They found that teens who reported more of this interference were more likely to have insecure attachment patterns, including anxiety about relationships and a tendency to withdraw emotionally. The association was seen across age, sex, and race and ethnicity.
Grant is clear that he doesn’t want to place unrealistic expectations on parents. No one is saying they can never use their phones around their kids or must drop everything the moment a child wants their attention. Instead, if parents are in the middle of something and can’t respond right away, he advised acknowledging the child, explaining why they are busy and letting them know when they will be available.
“Don’t ignore them. Just acknowledge them, let them feel seen, let them feel heard,” he explained. “Tell them, ‘As soon as I am done with this, I will come find you.’” Then be sure to follow through.
There are key times that should be device-free. Dinner, for instance, should be a period when everyone puts down their phones. “I’m not saying there aren’t outlier situations when you’re expecting a call,” he said. But it shouldn’t be the norm for everyone to be absorbed in their phones during a family meal.
Grant also advised putting devices away during activities where parents are expected to focus on their child, such as a trip to a playground or school performance.
And when a teen wants to talk, Grant said, parents should be grateful that their child trusts their counsel and make themselves available as soon as they can. In his experience working with young adults, if they’ve learned that their parents are too distracted to respond, they will seek guidance elsewhere — from a friend, a chatbot or even a stranger they met online.
Grant’s aim is not to pile more guilt onto parents, who are already saddled with countless expectations about how to raise their children. His goal is awareness, particularly among millennials, the first generation of “digital native” parents who themselves grew up surrounded by screens. Many are rightly concerned about protecting their children from excessive screen use and pushing tech companies to make products safer. They should also take a hard look at their own habits and consider whether they could inadvertently be harming their children.
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