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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Development in Infancy
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1421717
This article is part of the Research Topic Early Media Exposure View all 5 articles

Daily smartphone use predicts parent depressive symptoms, but parents' perceptions of responsiveness to their child moderate this effect

Provisionally accepted
Brandon T. McDaniel Brandon T. McDaniel 1*Sabrina Uva Sabrina Uva 1Jessica Pater Jessica Pater 1Victor Cornet Victor Cornet 1Michelle Drouin Michelle Drouin 1,2Jenny S. Radesky Jenny S. Radesky 3
  • 1 Health Services and Informatics Research, Parkview Mirro Center for Research & Innovation, Fort Wayne, United States
  • 2 Department of Psychology, Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States
  • 3 Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Indiana, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Smartphone use during caregiving has become increasingly common, especially around infants and very young children, and this use around young children has been linked with lower quality and quantity of parent-child interaction, with potential implications for child behavior, and parent-child attachment. To understand drivers and consequences of parent phone use, we were interested in the daily associations between parent phone use and depressed mood, as well as the potential for parent perceptions of their responsiveness toward their infant to alter the association between parent phone use and mood. Methods: In the present study, we explored associations between day-to-day changes in parent smartphone use (objectively-measured via passive sensing) around their infant, depressed mood, and parent perceptions of their responsiveness to their infants among a sample of 264 parents across eight days. We utilized multilevel modeling to examine these within-person daily associations. Results: Objectively-measured parent smartphone use during time around their infant was significantly associated with depressed mood on a daily basis. Interestingly, this was not true on days when parents perceived themselves to be more responsive to their infant. Discussion: These results suggest that parent judgements and perceptions of their parenting behavior may impact the potential link between parent phone use and parent mood. This is the first study utilizing intensive daily data to examine how parent perceptions may alter the felt effects of phone use on their parenting. Future work examining potential impacts of smartphone use on parenting should consider the effects of both actual use and perceptions about that use.

    Keywords: Smartphone use, Parenting, Parent responsiveness, caregiving, Depression, Technoference, Phubbing, Phone tracking

    Received: 22 Apr 2024; Accepted: 19 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 McDaniel, Uva, Pater, Cornet, Drouin and Radesky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Brandon T. McDaniel, Health Services and Informatics Research, Parkview Mirro Center for Research & Innovation, Fort Wayne, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.