Does parental smartphone use predict parents’ perceptions of family life? An examination of momentary associations between parental smartphone use, parental experiences of quality time, and parental perceptions of difficult child behavior

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a multi-method study that explored whether frequency and duration of parental smartphone use in the presence of children is associated with parents’ perceptions of quality time and child restlessness, an indicator of difficult child behavior. Additionally, the study explored whether parental perceptions of technoference, respectively time displacement, mediate the association between smartphone use measures - respectively frequency and duration of use - and the outcome measures. We collected experience sampling and smartphone log data among parents of children aged between 4 and 10 years to assess momentary between- and within-person-level associations between the frequency and duration of co-present parental smartphone use and parents’ perceptions of quality time, their child's restlessness, technoference, and time displacement. We gathered 1484 observations from 56 participants. Multilevel mediation analysis revealed no between-person associations between our two measures of parental smartphone use and the outcome measures. At the within-person level, no associations were found with child restlessness. However, smartphone frequency did predict perceptions of greater technoference, and smartphone duration predicted time displacement. Technoference in turn negatively predicted parental experiences, although the hypothesized mediation did not reach statistical significance. Time displacement predicted parental experiences of quality time in the opposite direction of what was hypothesized. Some heterogeneity was found in the observed within-person associations, suggesting that there is person-specificity. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.