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I think you're missing the point here. There are many times when a parent should be giving their attention to their child, but they aren't because their attent

I think you're missing the point here. There are many times when a parent should be giving their attention to their child, but they aren't because their attention is on their phone. The specific activity they're doing on their phone doesn't matter. Before, you could still do these activities instead of focusing on your child, but the way that manifested itself was completely different. A parent going to the bar after work is different than a parent being at home but ignoring their child because they would rather look at their phone. In the first case, there is a clear line between when the parent is at home and when the parent is at the bar. And, it is fairly obvious if the parent is spending too much time at the bar and not enough time at home. In the smartphone situation, the parent can now be on their phone literally 100% of the time they're at home. The child has no idea if their parent is ready to focus on them, or is going to be distracted by the phone. And, it's not obvious at all if the parent is spending too much time on the phone. Therefore, from the perspective of the child, replacing the old activities with a smartphone activity is much much worse.

derefr 8y ago
I don't see how the focus on "the way that manifested itself" is at all relevant. My point is: bad parenting is bad parenting. As far as I know, smartphones haven't created bad parenting, or other social ills. They've just made it less legible, because now both the healthy activities and the unhealthy ones just look like "using your phone" to external observers. If the point is to figure out whether someone is a good parent, measuring "time spent on smartphone" will give completely useless answers, and so judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at what they're actually doing (the activity.) Fun fact: some parents do much of their communication with their children through their phone. Non-deaf parents of deaf children will often text more than they sign.
- dasil003 8y ago
  It's relevant in the sense that smart phones enable bad parenting on an unprecedented level.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- tlarkworthy 8y ago
  Play groups explicitly ban phones because otherwise some parents are always on their phones. This was not possible before smart phones. Being at a play group is mutually exclusive with actively doing work as a workaholic. With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your child. Its a new issue. I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their children. Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7 and children are picking up on it.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your child. Its a new issue. Having observed quite a number and variety of parents in proximity with their children over the years, I can quite confidently state that being a bad (in the sense of neglectful) parent in proximity to a child does not require a smartphone and is not a new issue. And obviously being an even worse (abusive) parent in close proximity to a child really doesn't require a smartphone, and is equally not a new issue. > I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their children. No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed. > Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7 They always could, and those “best” at being bad parents often were.
    - tlarkworthy 8y ago
      > No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed. This is my main point. It has changed. If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally neglectful. If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > This is my main point. It has changed. But, it hasn't. > If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally neglectful. True. > If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful. False. It may be harder for authorities to get the first lead which triggers an investigation which identifies criminal neglect in that case, but it is still criminal neglect. With or without the phone, which is immaterial; you can stay home and drink liquor all day while neglecting your child. Or stay home running an in-house brothel. Or stay home reading a book with the kid shut up in another room. Or, well, lots of things that don't need a smartphone, many of which are depressingly well attested in the records of actual child neglect cases. There have been high profile cases of people who stayed home with their children and severely neglected them being identified, investigated, prosecuted, and punished...since before smartphones were a thing. And, even in the ones after smartphones, I've never seen smartphone use identified as a significant factor.
- socialist_coder 8y ago
  > judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at what they're actually doing (the activity.) I do not agree with this. Just because you're doing some important work on your phone doesn't mean it's not bad parenting, if you should be interacting with your child instead.
- matt-attack 8y ago
  > They've just made it less legible I think they have severely facilitated bad parenting. They've made it easy. In the past, if a borderline bad parent was faced with hanging out at home with their child vs going out to the bar, they might very well have stayed home whereas the same parent would opt for the dating app. It's gotten much easier to make the bad choice.
  - ghettoimp 8y ago
    Agreed. Also when this borderline parent IS paying attention to the kid, the phone can start dinging and buzzing at them to pull them away. The bar wouldn't have done that. Probably.
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  I know you're arguing in good faith, but I think you're wrong and socialist_coder is right. Maybe this is a different way to look at it: have you seen parents at the bus stop, say, playing on their phones and not paying attention to their kids? (I say "their" but this is almost every parent, some time or other.) That's new behavior that didn't exist before smartphones, because it couldn't. Maybe those people were just as bad at parenting 25 years ago, but their bad parenting wasn't enabled and encouraged nearly as much -- the technology just wasn't there. I agree that "time spent on smartphone" is a very blunt metric -- any single easily-measurable number would be. But I also think it's a relatively good one. At least in the same ballpark as "time spent watching TV". Sure, what you watch on TV is relevant, but if you watch TV for 8 hours a day, that's very likely to be unhealthy.
  - derefr 8y ago
    My hypothesis here is that before smartphones, those parents literally weren't there. Smartphones (and other modern contrivances allowing for remote work and remote socialization) have turned households with one 10%-visible breadwinner and one 75%-visible homemaker into households with one 40%-visible breadwinner and one 95%-visible homemaker. Parents are at home more now. But that doesn't mean that they have any more time+energy available to give their kids than they always did. Before smartphones, a working father might head after work to the bar, to avoid his own family until he's calmed down from how frustrated his boss makes him. After smartphones, the same father might instead head into his study with a bottle of whiskey and talk to his friends (who are also getting drunk in their own homes) on a group-chat, or over a game of Fortnite. Before smartphones, a stay-at-home mother might have to run errands for a few hours: going to the bank, going to the grocery, going to attend a continuing-education class; and she would perhaps leave her child at home, or ask someone to babysit them, depending on the age. Now, instead, she's setting up some bill-payments and transfers in a banking app, then picking through a grocery-delivery app, and then watching an online lecture and participating in a forum as part of an online continuing-education program. In both cases, the parents are now spending more time at home than they were before—but no more (or less) time paying attention to their kids than they were before. If you measure the delta (time where you're near the kids but ignoring them), it looks like it's going up. But this is as misleading a statistic as the one that says seat-belts increase injuries: no, they don't, they just turn fatalities into injuries, and nobody was counting the injuries sustained during fatalities. Nobody was counting time spent outside the home as time spent ignoring your kids.
madaxe_again 8y ago
Phones may have amplified a pre-existing issue, but they are not the issue. My parents were experts at being in the same room as me while abrogating my existence. My mother lived on the phone (you know, the kind you put to your face and go “oh I know... oh I know.... oh he didn’t!”), and my father had a newspaper for a face. I inevitably one day had enough, and shredded the newspaper at the breakfast table, threw the phone into the garden. Oh, the hiding I got for that - but at least it was attention. They sent me to boarding school shortly thereafter, which was a relief, for the reasons you describe.
tssva 8y ago
My observation as someone that was a young child before smartphones, e-readers, the internet or even the Apple 1 is that parents didn't pay anymore attention to their kids then. They just had different distractions. But that is just my anecdotal evidence just like the article is just anecdotal. Give me some real research showing parents are giving children less attention and to a degree that it is negatively impacting them and I'll care.

derefr 8y ago

I don't see how the focus on "the way that manifested itself" is at all relevant. My point is: bad parenting is bad parenting. As far as I know, smartphones haven't created bad parenting, or other social ills. They've just made it less legible, because now both the healthy activities and the unhealthy ones just look like "using your phone" to external observers. If the point is to figure out whether someone is a good parent, measuring "time spent on smartphone" will give completely useless answers, and so judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at what they're actually doing (the activity.) Fun fact: some parents do much of their communication with their children through their phone. Non-deaf parents of deaf children will often text more than they sign.

dasil003 8y ago
It's relevant in the sense that smart phones enable bad parenting on an unprecedented level.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tlarkworthy 8y ago
Play groups explicitly ban phones because otherwise some parents are always on their phones. This was not possible before smart phones. Being at a play group is mutually exclusive with actively doing work as a workaholic. With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your child. Its a new issue. I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their children. Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7 and children are picking up on it.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your child. Its a new issue. Having observed quite a number and variety of parents in proximity with their children over the years, I can quite confidently state that being a bad (in the sense of neglectful) parent in proximity to a child does not require a smartphone and is not a new issue. And obviously being an even worse (abusive) parent in close proximity to a child really doesn't require a smartphone, and is equally not a new issue. > I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their children. No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed. > Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7 They always could, and those “best” at being bad parents often were.
  - tlarkworthy 8y ago
    > No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed. This is my main point. It has changed. If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally neglectful. If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > This is my main point. It has changed. But, it hasn't. > If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally neglectful. True. > If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful. False. It may be harder for authorities to get the first lead which triggers an investigation which identifies criminal neglect in that case, but it is still criminal neglect. With or without the phone, which is immaterial; you can stay home and drink liquor all day while neglecting your child. Or stay home running an in-house brothel. Or stay home reading a book with the kid shut up in another room. Or, well, lots of things that don't need a smartphone, many of which are depressingly well attested in the records of actual child neglect cases. There have been high profile cases of people who stayed home with their children and severely neglected them being identified, investigated, prosecuted, and punished...since before smartphones were a thing. And, even in the ones after smartphones, I've never seen smartphone use identified as a significant factor.
socialist_coder 8y ago
> judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at what they're actually doing (the activity.) I do not agree with this. Just because you're doing some important work on your phone doesn't mean it's not bad parenting, if you should be interacting with your child instead.
matt-attack 8y ago
> They've just made it less legible I think they have severely facilitated bad parenting. They've made it easy. In the past, if a borderline bad parent was faced with hanging out at home with their child vs going out to the bar, they might very well have stayed home whereas the same parent would opt for the dating app. It's gotten much easier to make the bad choice.
- ghettoimp 8y ago
  Agreed. Also when this borderline parent IS paying attention to the kid, the phone can start dinging and buzzing at them to pull them away. The bar wouldn't have done that. Probably.
iainmerrick 8y ago
I know you're arguing in good faith, but I think you're wrong and socialist_coder is right. Maybe this is a different way to look at it: have you seen parents at the bus stop, say, playing on their phones and not paying attention to their kids? (I say "their" but this is almost every parent, some time or other.) That's new behavior that didn't exist before smartphones, because it couldn't. Maybe those people were just as bad at parenting 25 years ago, but their bad parenting wasn't enabled and encouraged nearly as much -- the technology just wasn't there. I agree that "time spent on smartphone" is a very blunt metric -- any single easily-measurable number would be. But I also think it's a relatively good one. At least in the same ballpark as "time spent watching TV". Sure, what you watch on TV is relevant, but if you watch TV for 8 hours a day, that's very likely to be unhealthy.
- derefr 8y ago
  My hypothesis here is that before smartphones, those parents literally weren't there. Smartphones (and other modern contrivances allowing for remote work and remote socialization) have turned households with one 10%-visible breadwinner and one 75%-visible homemaker into households with one 40%-visible breadwinner and one 95%-visible homemaker. Parents are at home more now. But that doesn't mean that they have any more time+energy available to give their kids than they always did. Before smartphones, a working father might head after work to the bar, to avoid his own family until he's calmed down from how frustrated his boss makes him. After smartphones, the same father might instead head into his study with a bottle of whiskey and talk to his friends (who are also getting drunk in their own homes) on a group-chat, or over a game of Fortnite. Before smartphones, a stay-at-home mother might have to run errands for a few hours: going to the bank, going to the grocery, going to attend a continuing-education class; and she would perhaps leave her child at home, or ask someone to babysit them, depending on the age. Now, instead, she's setting up some bill-payments and transfers in a banking app, then picking through a grocery-delivery app, and then watching an online lecture and participating in a forum as part of an online continuing-education program. In both cases, the parents are now spending more time at home than they were before—but no more (or less) time paying attention to their kids than they were before. If you measure the delta (time where you're near the kids but ignoring them), it looks like it's going up. But this is as misleading a statistic as the one that says seat-belts increase injuries: no, they don't, they just turn fatalities into injuries, and nobody was counting the injuries sustained during fatalities. Nobody was counting time spent outside the home as time spent ignoring your kids.

madaxe_again 8y ago

Phones may have amplified a pre-existing issue, but they are not the issue. My parents were experts at being in the same room as me while abrogating my existence. My mother lived on the phone (you know, the kind you put to your face and go “oh I know... oh I know.... oh he didn’t!”), and my father had a newspaper for a face. I inevitably one day had enough, and shredded the newspaper at the breakfast table, threw the phone into the garden. Oh, the hiding I got for that - but at least it was attention. They sent me to boarding school shortly thereafter, which was a relief, for the reasons you describe.

tssva 8y ago

My observation as someone that was a young child before smartphones, e-readers, the internet or even the Apple 1 is that parents didn't pay anymore attention to their kids then. They just had different distractions. But that is just my anecdotal evidence just like the article is just anecdotal. Give me some real research showing parents are giving children less attention and to a degree that it is negatively impacting them and I'll care.