A new study is the first to document the real-time connection between phone use and the amount of speech directed at infants during everyday interactions. Published in Child Development, the research tracked phone use and speech over the course of a week, revealing that even short phone use episodes are associated with a notable decrease in the speech infants hear from their mothers.
Previous studies have shown that parental phone use can interfere with engagement and responsiveness, but much of the existing research has been conducted in controlled laboratory settings or public spaces. These studies may not accurately reflect the typical daily experiences between parents and their children at home.
This gap in knowledge is particularly important because early speech input is critical for a child’s language development. By observing parent-infant interactions in a natural, everyday context, this study aimed to provide a more realistic understanding of how phone use might affect the amount of speech directed toward infants during these interactions.
“A growing number of studies are finding associations between parental phone use and children’s language development,” said study authors Miriam Mikhelson and Kaya de Barbaro from the University of Texas at Austin. “We wanted to look at the way phone use may impact the quantity of speech infants hear as a potential mechanism for this connection. However, the language environment of an infant is complex, and the existing research only provides a snapshot of how distractions such as smartphones impact parents’ rates of speech.
“We designed our study so that we could characterize patterns of parental phone use and infants’ speech input (for infants ranging from 1-7 months old) during everyday interactions in the home over an extended period of time. Our results, therefore, provide greater ecological validity in the study of phone use behavior and language development.”
The researchers recruited 16 mother-infant pairs and collected detailed data on both phone use and verbal interactions over the course of a week. The infants, who had an average age of about four months, wore small audio recording devices, while the mothers’ phone use was tracked via an app on their smartphones. The researchers used these synchronized data to observe how often and how much mothers spoke to their infants during times when they were using their phones compared to times when their phones were not in use.
The methodology allowed the researchers to capture data across a full week of real-world, ecologically valid interactions, avoiding the artificiality of laboratory settings. The study divided phone use events into three categories based on duration: short (1-2 minutes), medium (3-6 minutes), and long (more than 7 minutes).
“We were surprised by the overall quantity of phone use across participants,” the researchers said. “Our sample had an average of 4.4 hours of phone use per 12-hour period. While other studies show comparably high rates of phone use, seeing the numbers, particularly on the higher end, were still striking.”
The findings revealed a significant association between maternal phone use and a reduction in the amount of speech infants were exposed to. Overall, the researchers found that phone use was linked to a 16% decrease in maternal speech directed toward the infant. The reduction was more pronounced during short phone use events of 1-2 minutes, with speech dropping by 26% during these periods.
The findings suggest that even brief interruptions caused by checking a phone can sharply decrease verbal engagement with an infant. Longer periods of phone use were also associated with reduced speech, but the effect was less substantial, with a 12% reduction during phone use lasting more than seven minutes.
Additionally, the researchers observed that the relationship between phone use and speech varied depending on the time of day. The largest decreases in speech were observed during late morning, early afternoon, and mid-afternoon, times which may correspond with key daily routines like mealtimes or caregiving activities that typically involve more interaction with the child.
These results suggest that the impact of phone use on maternal speech is not uniform and may be more pronounced during certain parts of the day when active engagement with the infant is more common.
“We do not yet know the specific factors that drive the association between parental phone use and decreased speech input or the longer-term effects on language learning,” Mikhelson and de Barbaro explained. “Our results show us that phone use does not have a uniform or consistently ‘negative’ impact on children’s speech input. It is therefore unlikely that eliminating phone use entirely during childcare is necessary, nor is it realistic.”
“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. 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. Some parents, however, may not have the luxury of turning off or putting their phones away due to work obligations or other responsibilities they hold.”
“For parents who are already anxious about the quality of their caregiving, like many new parents are, we recommend that they simply try their best to attend to their children – and to be honest with themselves about the degree to which smartphones hinder their ability to do so. Being aware of how easily we become consumed by our phones, despite our best intentions, is an important first step.”
While the study provides valuable insights into how phone use affects parent-infant interactions, it is not without limitations. One key limitation is the small and homogenous sample size. With only 16 mother-infant pairs, most of whom were White, highly educated, and from the same geographic area, the findings may not be fully representative of the broader population. Future research should aim to include more diverse participants in terms of race, socioeconomic status, and family structure to ensure that the results are generalizable.
Another limitation is the inability to directly observe the content of the phone use. The study relied on whether the phone screen was on or off to infer phone use, but this method does not provide information about what the mothers were doing on their phones. For example, using a phone for a video call might still involve talking to the infant, whereas reading a social media post or email likely involves less verbal interaction. Future research could benefit from more detailed data on the type of phone activity taking place to better understand how different forms of phone use impact parent-infant interactions.
Finally, while the study demonstrated a strong association between phone use and decreased speech, it does not establish a causal relationship. It is possible that mothers may use their phones more during periods when their infants are less engaged or during routine tasks where less verbal interaction is expected. Future research could explore this issue by examining not just the amount of phone use but also the specific contexts in which it occurs and how these contexts influence parent-child communication.
“The continuous advances in wearable sensor technology and multimodal data collection are enabling researchers to obtain more finite, ecologically-valid measures of parent and child behavior in the home,” the researchers said. “Future work will therefore be able to assess the impact of different kinds of phone use (e.g., text, phone call, social media, etc.) and different contexts (e.g., meals, play time, breastfeeding) which may have distinct effects on parents’ rates of speech, especially given the variation seen in our results.”
“Future work should also prioritize the diversity of participants, including greater variation in class, race, gender, and family composition. While smartphones are increasingly ubiquitous across populations, the ways in which parents engage with them are likely to vary.”
The study, “Mothers speak less to infants during detected real-world phone use,” Miriam Mikhelson, Adrian Luong, Alexander Etz, Megan Micheletti, Priyanka Khante, was authored by Kaya de Barbaro.
