“For the research, we created a 31-item parental questionnaire, with which we assessed the digital media usage habits of parents and children, the problematic use of mobile phones by the child, and the family’s joint digital and non-digital (real-life) leisure activities. In the laboratory, we measured the quality of the parent-child interaction in two situations: during a 5-minute free game, when the child-parent pairs could play freely with any of the prepared games, and then during a 5-minute structured game,” explained the details of the data collection, laboratory manager Veronika Konok, scientific associate of the Department of Ethology.
During the structured game, the parent-child pair had to draw with the well-known classic drawing board (etch-a-sketch). With one button you can draw vertically, while with the other you can draw horizontally, and rotating the two buttons at the same time results in a diagonal line. The task was for the parent and child to work together to draw a pine tree or a house, with one turning one button and the other the other. The researchers then analyzed videos of the interactions for indicators of the quality of the parent-child relationship.
They found five aspects that could be used to characterize the interactions in general: interactivity (e.g. the child initiates an interaction to which the parent responds), parental control (the parent physically or verbally controls the child), attention to the partner (e.g. they look at each other ), cooperation (they work together on the task) and shared fun (e.g. parent and child laugh together).
“During joint play, the interactions of children who mobilized and their parents were poorer than those of children who did not mobilize and their parents. There was less mutual attention and parental control,” Krisztina Liszkai-Peres summarized the results.
However, according to the results of the questionnaire, joint, non-digital activities help the child’s “gadget use” not to become problematic:
if the family spends more time together, it is less likely that the child who uses mobile phones will become addicted or that the child’s use of mobile phones will lead to regular family conflicts. However, joint digital activities have not proven to be as effective, probably because they do not provide the quality social situations that are essential for the development of secure attachment and the development of various skills (e.g. self-regulation) of the child.
“Several factors can be behind the correlations. On the one hand, the child’s use of digital devices takes away time from social activities, and as a result, the child’s social skills are less developed, which can also manifest itself during parent-child interaction. In addition, it was also found that the children who mobilize more, their parents also mobilize more, which can lead to the fact that family members have less time overall for real-life, high-quality togetherness, thus the quality of joint activities can deteriorate. However, the opposite relationship can also exist: a poorer parent-child relationship can lead to both parties paying more attention to digital devices,” pointed out Veronika Konok.
“However, it is important to note that mobile usage is not inherently evil. It is much more important that even if the child uses such a device, he should still have enough time for other, non-digital activities, such as exercise, sleep, and – as the results of the research show – for joint, screen-free family time. The latter can be considered a protective factor from the point of view of the development of problematic digital device use,” said Krisztina Liszkai-Peres.
The researchers therefore recommend that parents take part in as many screen-free activities as possible with their children. In this way, they can not only promote the development of their children’s personal relationships and social skills, but also prevent problematic device use.
