WEDNESDAY, June 26, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Mothers tend to speak less to infants when they’re on their smartphones, a new study finds. Moms talked 16% less to their babies when they were fiddling with their phone, researchers found. Shorter 1- to 2-minute intervals of phone use interfered with mom-baby interaction even more, decreasing a mother’s baby talk by 26%.
“Our advice to new parents is to be cognizant of the impact phones can have on their ability to be attuned to their child’s needs,” said lead researcher Miriam Mikhelson , a former doctoral student with the University of Texas at Austin. “It is critical for infants to have consistent and responsive care, which can be more difficult with the alluring and consuming nature of a smartphone.” Prior research has suggested that parents’ phone use could affect a child’s language development, researchers said.
However, most of these studies involved observing parents and children in controlled laboratory experiments. To get an idea of how parents interact with babies in the real world, researchers strapped audio recorders onto 16 infants for a week. They then checked these recordings against cell phone logs, to see how smartphone use influences the amount that moms talk with their babies.
“We were surprised by the overall quantity of phone use across participants,” said senior researcher Kaya de Barbaro , an assistant professor of psychology with the University of Texas at Austin. ‘Our sample had an.
