Reading text messages while bottle-feeding, answering emails at the dinner table, interrupting playtime to check a notification, or pausing a bedtime story to reply to a message: To what extent do these digital activities and distractions of daily life weigh on family interactions? And how do they affect exchanges between parents and their young children, which experts say are essential for building attachment bonds, as well as for the development of emotional regulation and even language?
To try to answer these questions, at a time when exposure to screens among very young children has become a public health issue, a new term has emerged among researchers and healthcare professionals: "technoference," a blend of technology and interference. It is imported from the United States, where experts like family psychology researcher Brandon McDaniel and pediatrician Jenny Radesky began studying, in the mid-2010s, the effects of parental distraction due to new technologies and digital devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) on their young children. The concept has also become the subject of research in France, with teams at the Université de Nanterre, the Université de Lille and the Université d'Aix-Marseille.
