When We Are the Ones Who Cannot Put the Phone Down

We talk a lot about children and screens. How much time they spend on tablets, whether social media is damaging their mental health, what age they should get a phone. These are real questions worth asking. But there is another screen time problem hiding in plain sight, and it is ours.

The average parent uses their phone for around four hours a day and checks it 67 times. That is according to research by Brandon McDaniel at Illinois State University, one of the leading academics studying what he calls "technoference" - the way technology interrupts face-to-face interactions between parents and children. An NIH-funded study tracking actual phone usage found that parents spent 27% of their time around their infant also on their smartphone. Not occasionally glancing at it. More than a quarter of the time.

Most of us would guess our number is lower than that. Most of us would be wrong.

The moments that get interrupted

A Pew Research Centre survey found that 68% of parents admit they are at least sometimes distracted by their phone when spending time with their children. From the other side, 46% of teenagers said their parent is distracted by their phone when they are trying to talk to them. Nearly half.

What is interesting is where the interruptions happen. McDaniel's research asked mothers how often technology interrupted their interactions with their young children during specific activities. The numbers were striking. 65% said it happened during playtime. 36% during reading together. 26% during mealtimes. 26% during bedtime routines. And 22% even during moments of discipline - when a child is being told off, and the parent is simultaneously checking a notification.

These are not random moments. They are the building blocks of a child's sense of security. Playtime is where young children learn to read social cues and share attention. Mealtimes are where families talk. Bedtime is where a child winds down feeling safe and connected. When a phone keeps pulling a parent's attention away during these windows, it does not just shorten the interaction. It changes the quality of it.

What the research actually shows

A study published in JAMA Network Open in 2024 followed over 1,300 children aged nine to eleven across multiple assessments. It found that higher levels of parental phone distraction were linked to higher levels of inattention and hyperactivity symptoms as those children got older. Children whose parents were more distracted at ages nine and ten showed more hyperactivity at ten and eleven, and more inattention by age eleven.

The effect sizes were small. This is not a case of phones single-handedly causing ADHD. But the pattern was consistent, and it held after controlling for other factors.

Other research paints a similar picture. When parents are absorbed in their phones, they become less responsive. They miss cues - a child trying to show them something, a toddler getting frustrated, a small bid for attention that goes unanswered. Observational studies in playgrounds and restaurants have found that children are more likely to take dangerous risks when their caregiver is distracted by a device. Not because the children are being reckless, but because the adult feedback loop that normally keeps them in check has gone quiet.

There is also a modelling effect. Research shows a moderate link between how much parents use screens and how much their children do. Children learn what is normal by watching us. If the phone is always in hand, that becomes the baseline.

Why this is hard to talk about

Part of the reason we focus on children's screen time and not our own is that it is easier. Setting a rule for someone else feels like responsible parenting. Looking at our own habits is uncomfortable.

But there is something else going on too. Phones are not just entertainment for parents. They are how we manage the logistics of family life - booking appointments, replying to the school, checking work emails, coordinating with partners. A lot of the time we spend on our phones around our children is not mindless scrolling. It is the invisible labour of keeping a household running. That makes it harder to draw a clean line between necessary use and distraction.

McDaniel's own research acknowledges this. The problem is not that parents use phones. It is the constant low-level interruption - the pull of a notification during a conversation, the instinct to check a buzz mid-sentence. It is the difference between stepping away to send an important message and being half-present for an entire evening.

Small shifts, not big rules

None of this means parents need to put their phones in a locked box at 4pm. The research does not support that kind of all-or-nothing response, and it would not be realistic anyway.

What it does suggest is that awareness matters. Simply knowing that the phone is pulling attention away - even when it does not feel like it - can change behaviour. Some families have found it helpful to leave phones in another room during meals or bedtime. Others just try to finish what they are doing on the phone before responding to their child, rather than doing both at once. The goal is not perfection. It is being present enough that your child feels like they have your attention when it counts.

The irony of the screen time debate is that we have spent years worrying about what screens do to children while barely questioning what they do to us as parents. The research is not saying phones are ruining families. But it is saying that the small, repeated moments of distraction add up - and that children notice them more than we think.

Next time your child says "look at this" and you are mid-scroll, it might be worth putting the phone down. Not because the research says you must. But because they asked.