Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond • Hacker News Board

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#131

Post by mlrtime » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #129

coldest_summer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware the helicopters. Give kids the freedom to make mistakes and suffer the (nonfatal, no loss of life or limb) consequences. Yes, there are cases to intervene, but generally, you should let your kids hurt themselves more. Pain is a very important form of learning. By overprotecting them, they become very vulnerable adults, then worse things happen.

> you should let your kids hurt themselves more This is quite presumptuous. Even minor injuries can add up to long term damage. We don't need to keep our kids inside or wrapped in crazy layers to protect them. We also don't need them to get hurt a lot for them to learn what's good or bad.

It's called "controlled risk taking"

Children need to take these risks themselves, the caregiver there is to put them in a place where the control limits the damage.

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#132

Post by scotty79 » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #26

scotty79 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About as much as telling your kid to not drink beer while you are doing it yourself.

The phrase "drink beer" could mean anything from 2 beers on a sunny weekend to 6-pack every night. They are not comparable.

Don't you think same could be true about the phone use?

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#133

Post by interludead » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

Being ignored because someone is staring at a phone absolutely feels different from them just being busy. At the same time, asking teenagers how much their parent's phone use bothers them and then finding that the most bothered teenagers feel less secure in the relationship is not quite the same as showing that the phone caused the insecurity

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#134

Post by philipallstar » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

acessoproibido wrote: post #65

jb1991 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numerous studies have supported this thesis, that phone addiction is identical to a chemical addiction.

5% of all deaths worldwide can be attributed to alcohol. Phone addiction is not identical. In some aspects its similar but in most others not.

Well, in terms of driving, talking on a hands free phone might be worse for your driving than being over the limit[0]. And that's from pure addiction and distraction; there are no exogenous chemicals physically altering you.

[0] https://www.trl.co.uk/uploads/trl/documents/TRL547.pdf

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#135

Post by interludead » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #9

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.

I can easily imagine the phone use and the kid's insecurity both coming from the same underlying family dynamic, rather than one neatly causing the other

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#136

Post by interludead » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #107

I find these studies specifically frustrating because they don't answer the most interesting question - is it damaging if your caregiver uses phone a lot but remains responsive. This study specifically excludes it, and fair enough when being honest about the statistical inference and not overreaching, but that is the question I find most interesting as someone who uses my phone to get away from my desk but keep work…

For a lot of parents, the phone may actually be what lets them be physically around their kids more

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#137

Post by magicalhippo » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

paytonjjones wrote: post #2

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…

To be fair they do kinda spell this out in the discussion section:

This study does not come without limitations. First, it is important to recognize that the present findings are correlational and cross-sectional in nature and therefore do not permit conclusions regarding directionality or causality. Although caregiver device-centric behaviors and adolescent attachment insecurity were robustly associated, it remains unclear whether perceived caregiver distraction is related to attachment insecurity, whether adolescents with higher levels of attachment insecurity are more likely to perceive caregiver behavior as inattentive or disruptive (i.e., reverse causality), or whether both reflect other unmeasured contextual or relational factors. Second, several of the DAIS items assess emotional reactions, which could conceptually overlap with anxious attachment. Thus, the relationship between the DAIS and ECR may reflect a partial overlap of the constructs. Third, both the DAIS and ECR-RS are self-reported measures at a single time point, which may have shared method variance. [...]

I definitely think some people get addicted to the phones, and that addiction is negative for the relationship with the child. I also think one can be active on a phone while also being attentive and available to the child, which would be less problematic for the relationship.

I also don't think the phone is new in this regard. I've certainly heard many stories from back in the days about parents being glued to the TV or work and not being attentive to their child. It's even the point of the quite well known song Cat's in the Cradle[1].

The main difference I guess is that the phone is so prevalent in the population, and there are a lot of apps and sites that are engineered to grab your attention.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_in_the_Cradle

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#138

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

twnettytwo wrote: post #20

paytonjjones wrote: post #2

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…

IMO this isn't necessarily bad (it's one way to get data), but the numbers are meaningless without a control. Unfortunately, I think we missed that bus by ~20 years. Had the same study been conducted every few years over the last two decades, I think it would have been valuable. Maybe it is still valuable to do this once every few years? (I think that everyone in 2026 is maximally addicted to mobile phones, but maybe…

[deleted]

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#139

Post by paytonjjones » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #28

paytonjjones wrote: post #2

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…

> A much more plausible causal explanation Why is that much more plausible? It implies that it has always been there, and that nothing has changed since the last century, which is unlikely. Unless you want to introduce some other recent factor, but that is going to be even less likely. And why? Because other studies have shown how addictive "phone" use is, and how it isolates people. And addicts (drugs, alcohol) are…

I find it more plausible given my priors as a research psychologist.

Correlational overlap between self-report scales is common. It's actually so common that at decent sample sizes, almost any arbitrary self-report will significantly correlate purely on valence. For instance, one should expect a correlation between people self-reporting "I had a tough childhood" with "I frequently suffer from skin rashes". This is because trait neuroticism (the degree to which people are prone to feel negative emotion) is a major driver of how people interpret and respond to scales generally.

In contrast, psychologists mightily struggle to find replicable experimental results. That's what you need here.

Re: Parental device use and the adolescent-caregiver attachment bond

#140

Post by bcjdjsndon » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

pmg101 wrote: post #126

le-mark wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in the past it was work. I suggest that reading previously took the roll devices take today. When my parents weren’t at work they were reading as often as not; newspapers and novels.

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, novels were regarded as the video games or TikTok of their age — shallow, addictive, and dangerous [0] You can interpret that as either "there's always a moral panic about anything new" or (my own take) "this is how far we have fallen". [0] https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-novels-will-destroy-you...

It's parental hysteria. Same as always.