Smartphones distract parents from cultivating feelings of connection when spending time with their children
By Kostadin Kushlev, Elizabeth W. Dunn. 2019
139 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In the U.S., 95% of smartphone users admit to having used their smartphones during their latest social gathering. Although smartphones are designed to connect us with others, such smartphone use may create a source of distraction that disconnects us from the people in our immediate social environment. Focusing on one fundamental social relationship—between parents and their children—we examined whether smartphones made parents feel distracted, thereby undermining key benefits parents reap when spending time with their children. Ina field experiment at a science museum (Study 1), we randomly assigned parents to use their phones frequently or infrequently. Frequent phone use led parents to feel more distracted, which in turn impaired feelings of social connection and the meaning that parents derived when spending time with their children. In an additional weeklong diary study (Study 2), we found further evidence that smartphones can distract parents from reaping a sense of social connection when spending time with their children. These studies suggest that being constantly connected to the Internet may carry subtle costs for the fabric of social life.
Subfields: Literature and Literary Theory, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a0682694980ad7fa505ccd86f545f742c66e48fb
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In Social Psychology
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Addictive Features of Social Media/Messenger Platforms and Freemium Games against the Background of Psychological and Economic Theories (2019, background): “Beyond the mentioned issues, (excessive use of) smartphones is known to impact on social communication in terms of reducing smiles when interacting with strangers [13], enjoyment of face-to-face interaction [14] or drawing parent’s attention away from their children [15].”