Parents’ Phubbing of Children

Parents’ phubbing of their children is epidemic. The empirical evidence shows that parents’ phubbing can be extremely harmful to children. Ignoring children in favour of the smartphone can signal disinterest in them, heighten their feelings of rejection, and lower their feelings of being accepted by their parents. Parents’ phubbing can make children feel socially disconnected, reduce the quality of their relationship with their parents, and increase their levels of anxiety. It can worsen their feelings of satisfaction with life, lead them to feel depressed, and cause them to become addicted to their smartphones. It can cause children to duplicate their peers’ deviant behaviour such as engaging in cyberbullying and hostile behaviour in cyberspace. Parents’ phubbing can even cause children to experience academic burnout. This chapter discusses these detrimental effects on children in detail. Parents’ phubbing did not affect all children in the same way, so the chapter also clarifies the differences between males and females in their response to their mothers’ and fathers’ phubbing.