Study Finds Parents' Smartphone Distraction Harms Child Attachment

Researchers led by Don Grant of Newport Healthcare in the United States studied how parental smartphone use affects teenage children. In a July 2026 paper in *Frontiers in Psychology*, they surveyed 600 U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 17 and introduced the Device Attachment Interference Scale (DAIS) to measure perceived parental distraction. Higher DAIS scores – indicating that teens notice more frequent interruptions from parents' phones – were strongly linked to insecure attachment patterns, both anxious and avoidant, which can lead to poorer mental and physical health later in life.

The authors point out that unlike many familial risk factors, parents' device habits are intentionally controllable. They call for greater public discussion about "technoference," the phenomenon where digital devices interrupt face‑to‑face interaction, and suggest that reducing such distractions could improve youth emotional development.