Is everyone on smartphones or tablets around the dinner table a common scene at your house? You might want to put the devices away after reading this.
A study shows that 54 percent of kids think that their parents check their smartphones too often. Another 36 percent added that they were bothered when parents were distracted by phones during conversation, which made almost a third of kids, 32 percent, “feel unimportant.”
That’s the news from this June 2015 study commissioned by Amsterdam-based online security company AVG Technologies. Researchers surveyed 6,117 children between the ages of 8-13 in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, New Zealand, the UK and the U.S. to deliver the results.
According to the study, “Mobile phones are gaining an increasing share in the battle for parental attention, with a third of children, surveyed for a recent study, saying their parents spent equal or less time with them, than on their devices.”
Parents agreed their smartphone use was “too frequent” at 52 percent, with 28 percent of the adults also expressing concern that they were not setting a good example for their kids.
Interestingly enough, Brazil parents topped the survey for device use, with 56 percent of Brazilian kids saying they would take away their parents’ smartphones if they could.
See the infographic below on the results:
