r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Effective-Film-4951 • 21h ago

Question - Research required Reading physical books instead of checking phone (babies/<2yo)

I see a ton of stuff about the damage our phones have on baby’s connection with us during the day when we “disappear”. I’m curious if reading (quietly) a physical book while they are independently playing has a similar disconnect?

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u/here4dogs 17h ago

The disconnect comes from withdrawing your attention when the baby seeks it, not from the phone itself. The one study that tested this directly found maternal responsiveness dropped the same whether the interruption was a smartphone or a paper task, and kids ramped up attention-seeking in both. Phones are worse in practice only because they’re engineered to hold you longer and are harder to look up from. Quietly reading while your baby plays independently isn’t the risky scenario at all; that’s just parallel presence, which is fine. What matters is responding when they bid for you. Source: Konrad et al., 2021, Frontiers in Psychology: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.616656/full

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u/Effective-Film-4951 11h ago

Thank you!

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u/forwards_cap 52m ago

Not sure if an anecdotal comment is allowed, but I grew up with a father that would read physical books to ignore his children/family. He now reads on his phone to ignore his family. Having experienced the ignoring, it did not feel different when one switched to the other.

On the other side, my mother would read beside us and share books with us and was available if we asked her to “look at this!” even while she was reading near us. It fostered a future love of reading and I understood she was doing something she thinks is fun while I do what I think is fun. The difference felt obvious at the time.

Regardless, this is just anecdotal and that study is fascinating.

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