I would expect anxious/insecure parents to use placating behaviours (like device use) themselves, and I would expect their children to be anxious/insecure too.
So I would expect the study to find that the children of phone-overusers were more likely to be anxious/insecure.
Still, I would also expect that less phone use (subbed with more attention to kid) would help the kid with this.
This is a weak study that is exemplary of psychology's weak experimentation culture and correlation/causation laundering, especially with regard to self-report.
The heavily hinted implication is that device use damages relationships. But look at what they actually measured. They ask adolescents to answer questions like:
"My primary caregiver ignores me when they are on a device." (DAIS, their new scale)
And then also ask them to answer questions like:
"I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me." (ECR-RS)
And then act like it's a revelation that these two self-report scales are correlated.
A much more plausible causal explanation is that a single psychological variable (e.g. a bad relationship) causes both self reports, rather than the implied pathway that device use causes A, which then causes B.
A better version of this study would be to run an experiment where you take away (or heavily restrict) parental phone access over a month or two and measure the parent-child relationship vs. a control group.
> "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.
My dude, I don’t know how to explain this to you but phones and computers are addictive for people. They get hooked on them to feed the lizard brain with digital junk food engineered for engagement.
This tracks with my son’s observations on my wife’s phone use. She’ll tell him to stop watching youtube, then go right back to doing so herself.
It doesn’t really seem to compute how hypocritical that is.
About as much as telling your kid to not drink beer while you are doing it yourself.
Yes son. Go back to your iPad.
I would expect anxious/insecure parents to use placating behaviours (like device use) themselves, and I would expect their children to be anxious/insecure too.
So I would expect the study to find that the children of phone-overusers were more likely to be anxious/insecure.
Still, I would also expect that less phone use (subbed with more attention to kid) would help the kid with this.
This is a weak study that is exemplary of psychology's weak experimentation culture and correlation/causation laundering, especially with regard to self-report.
The heavily hinted implication is that device use damages relationships. But look at what they actually measured. They ask adolescents to answer questions like:
"My primary caregiver ignores me when they are on a device." (DAIS, their new scale)
And then also ask them to answer questions like:
"I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me." (ECR-RS)
And then act like it's a revelation that these two self-report scales are correlated.
A much more plausible causal explanation is that a single psychological variable (e.g. a bad relationship) causes both self reports, rather than the implied pathway that device use causes A, which then causes B.
I largely agree this is a weak study, but it also feels like no matter how you run this study it's going to be flawed.
Parent-child interactions, relationships, feelings are probably the hardest thing to quantify at any scale.
In the end, it's really, "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.
A better version of this study would be to run an experiment where you take away (or heavily restrict) parental phone access over a month or two and measure the parent-child relationship vs. a control group.
> "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.
I wouldn't be too sure of that actually: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/the-secret-to-parenting-...
My dude, I don’t know how to explain this to you but phones and computers are addictive for people. They get hooked on them to feed the lizard brain with digital junk food engineered for engagement.
That’s irrelevant to the issue with the study that the parent identified.
Manipulating "studies" doesn't help reveal how true this is, nor help find effective ways to reduce it.