Parents' social media use could affect their kids even after they log off, new study warns
Many people try to limit the time they spend on social media when they're with their kids. But new research suggests social media use has a significant effect on interactions with children — even when adults aren't looking at their screens.
Mothers who were in the habit of spending more time on social media talked much less to their kids when they played with them than did moms who spent less time on social networks, and that difference carried over when they weren't using their devices, according to a study to be presented Tuesday at the Digital Media and Developing Minds International Scientific Congress in Washington, DC.
While past research has focused on how kids are affected when parents or guardians are on their screens, this study looked at the impact of cell phone use on parent-child interactions even when parents were offline, said Liz Robinson, a doctoral student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and lead author of the study.
Mothers who used social media extensively spoke 29% less to their kids while playing with them — without their phones — compared with the moms whose social media use was low. Moms in the low-use category used social media an average of 21 minutes per day, while moms in the high-use category used social media an average of 169 minutes per day.
Other uses of screens, including checking email or the weather, weren't associated with talking less to kids, according to the study of 65 toddlers ages 2 through 5 years old and their mothers in Alabama.
Although Robinson's research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a journal, it doesn't surprise me. In my own research, people often say they still think about what they see on social media long after they log off. Although the moms in this study were physically present with their kids, it's possible their minds were elsewhere.
'Often our minds wander to activities that are more pleasurable naturally, and we know social media is that experience for most people,' said Kris Perry, executive director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, a nonprofit to help kids lead healthy digital lives and the organizer of the Congress.
Perry, who was not involved in the research, pointed out that social networks show us tailored content that is intensely interesting to us, so 'it makes you want to experience it longer.'
Whatever the reason, kids need their parents to be mentally present when they play. Thankfully, there are things we can do to make sure our social media use doesn't interfere with our parenting.
One of the most important things parents can do is to talk to their children all the time.
Learning language is 'a major feature of optimal child development' and it's 'dependent on children expressing and receiving language from birth through (age) 18,' Perry said.
Greater exposure to language tends to improve kids' brain development, academic outcomes, communication skills and language, she said.
The interactions parents and kids have when they play are also important to children's socioemotional development, Robinson said, to help them develop their executive functions and attention spans and learn how to regulate their emotions.
Interacting with adults is also one of the ways children learn what to prioritize. 'Kids are acutely aware of where a parent is looking,' Robinson said, 'and they learn what's important. So, when our gaze is constantly going towards a device, towards a smartphone, well, we're communicating to our children what's important in that moment, too.'
That's why parents should make a conscious effort to be mentally present when interacting with their kids. 'Our attention is one of the best things that we can give to our children,' Robinson said, noting that this conveys to them that we love them.
Robinson recommended that parents set aside certain times of the day to give their kids undivided attention. That's advice I also give when I speak to parent groups and at schools about how to handle kids' social media use.
Of course, finding this time isn't easy. 'None of us can give our kids undivided attention all the time, but it can be helpful to think on a smaller scale,' Robinson said. 'Though I have many things to tend to today, I can give my child undivided attention for the next 15 minutes. That focused time goes a long way from the child's perspective.'
When we're with our kids, we can remind ourselves 'there is nowhere but here, and there is no time but now in your child's mind,' Robinson said. 'And so, you have many other thoughts and many other priorities that are floating around in your head. But we can compartmentalize those and be fully present with our child, who knows only this moment, and only our attention.'
Parents should also pay attention to how their social media use is affecting them and their children, Perry said. 'Understand what the impact of using social media is on you personally, and make sure that you're mitigating what those impacts are when you go to interact with your child.'
A simple way to do that? Limit the number of times you check it per week and how long you spend on it each time.
'Reduce the amount of time you're on social media to prevent the likelihood that you would even inadvertently speak less' to your child, Perry said. And, of course, using social media less could also free up more time for parents to spend playing with their kids.
Robinson said the biggest limitation of the research is that it's correlational — the authors couldn't establish whether social media was making parents more passive or whether more passive parents were using social media more. In addition, the study couldn't account for factors such as parents' mental health, income and education.
I'd also love to see this study replicated with fathers, who should also be taking responsibility for playing with their kids and using social media responsibly.
Still, the study suggests using social media more could reduce our conversations with our children, and that got me thinking. Next time I play with my daughters, I'll be checking in with myself on whether I'm talking to them or my thoughts are elsewhere.
I'll also be more conscious of how much the content I'm seeing on social media is continuing to play out in my head even after I'm done scrolling. I might even talk to my kids about the changes I make as a result.
Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN's Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Medscape
17 minutes ago
- Medscape
What ‘The Pitt' Can Teach Us About Hospital Deaths
When The Pitt first hit the airwaves last winter, it started a lot of conversations among clinical professionals, including the show's clinically accurate and emotionally nuanced portrayal of the death. In particular it was the death of the character known as Mr. Hayes, whose adult children wrestled with whether or not to intubate him over the course of several episodes. The interaction among and between the fictional family and Noah Wyle's character, Dr. Michael 'Robby' Robinavitch, are unflinching and honest — and they were informed by, among other things, resources developed by Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, and the End Well Project. Ungerleider, an internal medicine physician and the host and producer of the podcast Before We Go and the TED Health Podcasts, founded End Well in 2017 with the mission of making the end of life more dignified and human centered. When considering how death is portrayed in the media — on television, at least — Ungerleider and her team discovered that it is anything but: more than 80% of the deaths we see on the small screen are the result of violence, and that trend is only increasing. Depictions of gun violence on popular primetime dramas doubled from 2000 to 2018, while illness accounted for only 4.3% of deaths shown. 'We looked at over 141,000 scripted TV episodes from 2010 to 2020 and found that what's shown on screen rarely reflects how most people actually die,' Ungerleider said. 'Most people will actually die in hospitals or other healthcare facilities or other institutions, isolated. But you wouldn't know that from watching TV.' Shoshana Ungerleider, MD Not only is this overly violent TV landscape unrealistic but also it leaves audiences in the dark about what they themselves may encounter when met with the eventual decline of a loved one, Ungerleider said. 'When we overrepresent violent deaths and really inaccurately portray the end of life experience, I think that this leaves audiences really of all ages unprepared for some of the decisions that they may one day face for themselves and the people that they love,' she said. 'Shows like The Pitt , who really get it right with all the urgency that you see in a hospital setting, but also nuance and ethical complexity, helps close the gap between kind of the fiction of television and real life.' The team at End Well worked with the Hollywood, Health & Society program at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg, Los Angeles, for more than 3 years to produce the report and accompanying guidelines for the media to assist in portraying natural death accurately. Kate Langrall Folb, program director for Hollywood, Health & Society, said that while the program has been consulting on TV shows and movies since 2001 on 'everything from diabetes to HIV to cancer and beyond,' they had never worked with shows on how to depict the end of life. Kate Langrall Folb 'We were delighted to partner with End Well to develop tools and resources for writers on that topic,' Langrall Folb said. 'Hollywood was not asking for these tools, but I believe that is mainly because they didn't know they needed them. Now that we have brought this topic to their attention, they're all in.' Langrall Folb highlighted a second storyline from The Pitt for its relevance and realistic portrayal, driven by the tools developed by End Well and the Norman Lear Center group — an arc about a patient who is brain dead due to an overdose. She learned that, thanks in part to the contributions the Norman Lear Center and End Well made, at least one family was able to better process and make decisions during a tragedy. 'There was an ER [emergency room] doc who wrote to the show saying that he was in a similar situation in real life with a brain-dead patient. He was preparing himself to speak to the family to discuss what they wanted to do, bracing himself because those conversations are usually so difficult — people not wanting to accept, etc.,' Langrall Folb said. 'But when he entered the room to talk to the family, they told him not to worry, that they had watched The Pitt and already decided that they didn't want to keep their loved one on life support any longer. It's amazing to see this kind of real-world impact come from our work behind the scenes.' Langrall Folb believes that this impact will spread as more producers and writers pick up the guidelines and incorporate them into their work. 'Audiences are affected by what they see on their favorite shows,' she said. 'Accurately showing the myriad ways in which people's lives come to an end will help them when they or a loved one are facing the end of their own lives.' Ungerleider is hoping that more, and more accurate, portrayals of natural death will help people understand the end of life better and be better prepared as individuals and as caregivers. 'Media has the power to normalize what we so often avoid talking about — like grief, caregiving, and mortality. And when that's done thoughtfully, it doesn't just educate — it empowers,' Ungerleider said. Ungerleider pointed out that what the End Well team and the people at the Norman Lear Center have developed is not just a clinical resource, it opens up space for the emotions involved in death. 'This isn't just about getting the medical details right — it's about honoring the human experience. When stories reflect the complexity of serious illness, families, caregivers, and patients at home feel seen,' Ungerleider said. 'When a character on TV gets support from a palliative care team, it gives viewers permission to ask for the same in their real lives.' The Executive Director of End Well, Tracy Wheeler, who was also integral to the development of the report and the tools, framed the resources like a map to this fairly unexplored territory. 'By helping Hollywood portray serious illness and death more accurately, we're not just improving representation — we're giving people the language and perspective to better navigate these experiences in real life,' Wheeler said. 'This work reflects our shared belief that storytelling has the power to shift culture.'
Fast Company
38 minutes ago
- Fast Company
What is quantum computing? Here's everything you need to know right now
Computing revolutions are surprisingly rare. Despite the extraordinary technological progress that separates the first general-purpose digital computer—1945's ENIAC —from the smartphone in your pocket, both machines actually work the same fundamental way: by boiling down every task into a simple mathematical system of ones and zeros. For decades, so did every other computing device on the planet. Then there are quantum computers—the first ground-up reimagining of how computing works since it was invented. Quantum is not about processing ones and zeros faster. Instead, it runs on qubits—more on those later—and embraces advanced physics to take computation places it's never been before. The results could one day have a profound impact on medicine, energy, finance, and beyond—maybe, perhaps not soon, and only if the sector's greatest expectations play out. The field's origins trace to a 1981 conference near Boston cohosted by MIT and IBM called Physics of Computation. There, legendary physicist Richard Feynman proposed building a computer based on the principles of quantum mechanics, pioneered in the early 20th century by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Niels Bohr, among others. By the century's end—following seminal research at MIT, IBM, and elsewhere, including Caltech and Bell Labs—tech giants and startups alike joined the effort. It remains one of the industry's longest slogs, and much of the work lies ahead. Willow, a Post-it-size quantum processor that its lead developer, Hartmut Neven, described as 'a major step.' In February, Microsoft debuted the Majorana 1 chip —'a transformative leap,' according to the company (though some quantum experts have questioned its claims). A week later, Amazon introduced a prototype of its own quantum processor, called Ocelot, deeming the experimental chip 'a breakthrough.' And in March, after one of D-Wave's machines performed a simulation of magnetic materials that would have been impossible on a supercomputer, CEO Alan Baratz declared his company had attained the sector's 'holy grail.' No wonder the tech industry—whose interest in quantum computing has waxed and waned over its decades-long gestation—is newly tantalized.
New York Times
39 minutes ago
- New York Times
Does Benadryl Do More Harm Than Good?
Q: My allergist says that Benadryl isn't safe. What's the issue, and what should I use instead? When your nose is running and the achoos won't quit, you might reach for Benadryl. This drug — whose generic name is diphenhydramine — provides almost immediate allergy relief. And with Benadryl around since the 1940s, it's become the 'Kleenex' of antihistamines, said Dr. Anna Wolfson, an allergist at Massachusetts General Hospital. But experts believe it's time to say goodbye because of how older antihistamines like Benadryl cross the blood-brain barrier, causing grogginess and increasing the risk of falls, car accidents and potentially even dementia. If you're on a deserted island and Benadryl is the only allergy drug available, you should take it, Dr. Wolfson said. But in almost every other case, there are safer, better options. How does Benadryl work? Our bodies produce the chemical histamine to rally the immune system against germs. But the same alarm can be set off by springtime flowers, peanuts and other menaces. Antihistamines block this false alarm, helping prevent or relieve allergy symptoms. Benadryl, Zzzquil and other drugs with diphenhydramine can also make you drowsy, since histamine helps the brain stay alert, said Dr. Zachary Rubin, an Illinois-based allergist and author of the upcoming book, 'All About Allergies.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
