Study: "Mommy, do you love your phone more than me?"

paytonjjones

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.

whatever1

Yes son. Go back to your iPad.

Wolfenstein98k

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.

Aeolun

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.

godwinson__4-8

I often wonder why even today with falling birthrates so many people have kids. It's a personal decision, so not something you would randomly bring up with strangers and not something one really thinks to discuss with friends until someone has a kid. Once they are on the path to question it would be rude. But it strikes me that many parents don't really think about it that much, as in the original rationale. I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this. What choice could be more significant? Then again, maybe the personal nature of it means one is not simply aware of what other people are going through. Maybe everyone is really thinking it through. I am led to doubt it though. I'm curious if other people have had the chance to ask their own parents and felt satisfied by the results. That might be one of the few occasions you might have hope for a somewhat revealing answer. I've found this notion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism somewhat interesting in this regard.