A study found that children who feel their parents are 'distracted by smartphones' tend to have more unstable attachment relationships with their parents.

With the widespread use of smartphones and tablets, many studies have been conducted on the physical and mental effects of children's device use. However, the impact of parents' own device use on parent-child relationships is not well understood. Don Grant and colleagues at Newport Healthcare have reported on the association between parental device use and attachment tendencies that adolescents exhibit with their parents.

Frontiers | “Mommy, do you love your phone more than me?”: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1766665/full

Teenagers whose parents are more distracted by phones are more insecure | EurekAlert!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131130

Don Grant, who works at Newport Healthcare, a mental health treatment firm for young people and families, heard a story about a mother whose young daughter asked, 'Is your smartphone more important than me?' This prompted him to focus on 'how children perceive their parents' device use.'

Research has progressed on the phenomenon of parents being distracted by devices such as smartphones, which disrupts parent-child interactions. This interruption of interpersonal relationships due to digital devices is called ' techno-false ,' and the behavior of prioritizing a smartphone over the person in front of you is called ' phubing .' However, there have been limited measures to measure how much adolescents feel that their parents are distracted by devices and not paying enough attention to them.

Therefore, Grant and his colleagues created the 'Device Attachment Interference Scale (DAIS)' to measure children's perceptions of their parents' device-centric behavior and their feelings towards that behavior. The items of the DAIS are as follows:

• The primary caregiver's device use is negatively impacting their relationship.
• Primary caregivers are not spending enough time with their children because they are using devices.
• The primary caregiver's use of devices is problematic.
- The primary caregiver ignores me when using the device.
- Even when attending an important event, the primary caregiver appears distracted due to device use.
• Primary caregivers spend too much time on devices.
- If the device is not put down when the primary caregiver is seeking their attention, the child will feel that they are not important.
• The primary caregiver uses the device even when they have other things to do.
• Even when participating in social events, the primary caregiver appears distracted due to device use.
- Gets angry if the primary caregiver doesn't put the device away.
• The primary caregiver is using a device when they should be spending time with the child.
- I clash with the primary caregiver over their device use.

The DAIS survey was conducted in August 2025, with 600 children aged 12-17 living in the United States participating. Participants were asked to name a primary caregiver, either a mother or a father, and to rate their attachment to that caregiver on a five-point scale from 'never' to 'almost always.' They also completed a questionnaire to measure their attachment tendencies with their primary caregiver.

Grant et al. analyzed the responses and found that children with higher DAIS scores tended to have stronger anxious and avoidant attachment tendencies towards their parents. Anxious attachment is characterized by a strong fear of being abandoned, while avoidant attachment is characterized by a tendency to maintain psychological distance from others. In other words, children who felt they were not receiving attention due to their parents' device use tended to have insecure attachment tendencies towards their parents.

Grant explains that in clinical practice, there has been an increasing number of cases where children who sought attention while their parents were focused on their device screens complained of feeling 'disregarded,' 'rejected,' or 'unimportant.'

However, this study is an observational study that analyzes data based on self-reported data at a single point in time, and therefore cannot definitively conclude that parental device use destabilized children's attachment tendencies.

Grant stated, 'I'm not saying that every time a child asks for attention, parents have to drop everything, including what they're doing on their devices, and respond,' but he recommends showing that you've noticed their need for attention and responding in some way when they do seek it.