Maternal smartphone use and mother–child interaction

This is one of those studies that elicits a “Duh!” response from me, but I love the research design and the findings. I also always told students that the period from 2-3 is critical for the development of language, play, and responses to discipline, among other things. Published in Child Development, Lederer, Artzi, and Borodkin (2021) address “The Effects of Maternal Smartphone Use on Mother–Child Interaction” Their sample is small, just 33 Israeli mothers and their 24- to 36-month-old toddlers (17 girls and 16 boys) from middle-high socioeconomic status. Their three within-subjects experimental conditions are also clever – maternal smartphone use, maternal magazine reading, and uninterrupted dyadic free-play. Here are the findings:

The mothers produced fewer utterances, provided fewer responses to child bids, missed child bids more often, and exchanged fewer conversational turns with their children when engaged with a smartphone or printed magazines compared to uninterrupted free-play. The quality of maternal responsiveness was also decreased. These findings suggest maternal smartphone use compromises mother–child interaction, which given smartphone ubiquity in daily life may have negative effects on child development in various domains, including language, cognition, and socioemotional regulation.

Here, as is often the case, I can only say that the findings suggest the need for strong recommendations to parents about their own media use in addition to asking about children’s media use.