EXTENSIVE PHONE USE BY PARENTS MIGHT DAMAGE TODDLER’S GROWTH

A new study has found that interaction between mothers and their toddlers is reduced by a factor of four when the mothers use their smartphones and this might damage their toddler’s development as well.

The new study was led by Dr Katy Borodkin of the Department of Communication Disorders at the Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions, Sackler Faculty of Medicine of Tel Aviv University.

The experiment involved dozens of mothers of toddlers (aged two to three years). The mothers were ostensibly invited to participate in a study examining the link between the mother’s and the child’s interests, and so they were asked to perform three tasks: Browse a designated Facebook page and like videos and articles that interested them; read printed magazines and mark articles that interested them; and finally, play with the child while the smartphone and magazines were outside the room (uninterrupted free play). “Our goal was to simulate situations in real life where the mother has to take care of her child, while at the same time devoting some of her attention to her smartphone,” Dr Katy Borodkin explained.

“The mothers were unaware of the purpose of the experiment, so they behaved naturally by splitting their interest between the toddlers and the smartphone and magazines. We videotaped all the interactions between the mothers and the toddlers and later scanned the recordings frame by frame in an attempt to quantify the mother-child interaction,” she added. Researchers from Tel Aviv University have defined three components of mother-child interaction. The maternal linguistic input was examined first, which is the linguistic content that the mother conveyed to the child. According to previous research, this is an important predictor of a child’s language development. It has been found in the past that reduced linguistic input leads to reduced vocabulary in a child, even as an adult.