Parents’ phone habits linked to poorer teen mental health, study finds

A Frontiers in Psychology study published June 17 found that 600 U.S. adolescents ages 12 to 17 who perceived more parental phone distraction were more likely to report insecure attachment and poorer emotional well-being. The research also validated a new Device Attachment Interference Scale, or DAIS, to measure how teenagers experience caregivers’ device-centered behavior at home.

The findings put a harder edge on a familiar scene: a parent glancing down at a screen during dinner, a child repeating a question, a conversation breaking off mid-sentence. In the study, higher DAIS scores were consistently associated with more insecure attachment, including both anxious and avoidant patterns, toward mother-like and father-like figures. The researchers framed the behavior as technoference and phubbing, the habit of ignoring someone in front of you while focusing on a phone.

Don Grant, who leads research at Newport Healthcare’s Center for Research and Innovation, said his concern about caregiver device use began about 10 years ago, as he kept seeing it in clinical settings. Grant also said attachment can still shift during the teen years, which makes the home environment especially important when adolescents are forming trust, independence and self-esteem.

The new paper adds to a broader line of research that has moved beyond screen time alone and toward the quality of interaction around screens. A 2024 experiment in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that parental distraction reduced children’s communicative bids whether the distraction was digital or non-digital. A 2024 Pediatrics article linked parental phubbing to weaker mother-child relationships, while other studies have associated it with adolescent distress, depression and problematic internet use.

Walter Jones, a spokesperson for the Adolescence Free of Phones platform, said the group regularly hears from schoolchildren who have to repeat themselves because parents are on their phones and not listening. That complaint fits the central worry running through the new study: that the problem is not only what children see on their own screens, but whether adults are available enough to make attention feel reliable.

The result is a warning for families already trying to limit children’s device use. The new evidence suggests the sharper question may be how often parents look up, listen fully and leave the phone out of the conversation.