Don’t text and drive — we know this much. But has anyone considered the dangers of mobile-distraction while supervising children? The answer is yes, doctors have, and they’re concerned.
The perils of texting while parenting have been uncovered in data released by the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggesting that a 12 percent rise in nonfatal injuries to children under age five may be related to the also increasing number of Americans who own and use smartphones.
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Accidental injuries to children under age five rose 12 percent between 2007 and 2010, after falling steadily since at least the 1970s.
While limited data is collected that could establish direct links, the dramatic increase in unintentional injury in young children under parental supervision coincides with a spike in smartphone sales.
The number of Americans who own smartphones has grown from almost 9 million in 2007 when Apple’s iPhone was first released, to 63 million at the end of 2010.
In July 2012, that number had again rocketed to 114 million.
The dawn of the iPhone brought with it a mini-revolution in digital advances and hand-held convenience, but doctors are now suggesting it could also have heralded a new era in irresponsible parenting.
“It’s very well understood within the emergency medicine community that utilising devices — hand-held devices — while you are assigned to watch your kids — that resulting injuries could very well be because you are utilising those tools,” an emergency centre doctor told the Wall Street Journal.
“We think we’re multitasking and not really feeling like we are truly distracted. But in reality we are,” said another.
Increases in injuries were present in older age brackets as well, but the rates of increase tended to drop off by the ages in which the requirement of constant adult supervision subsided.
Unintentional injuries among kids aged five to nine increased by five percent in the same time period, and three per cent for kids aged 10-14.
Other factors have been suggested to explain the three-year increase across age groups, including budget cuts by schools and governments, riskier behaviour among children, or an increasing tendency for parents to present at emergency rooms.
Child experts have said that it is difficult to determine causes for parental distraction as parents don’t often offer explanations of what they were doing when their child was injured, combined with a tendency for people to underreport the time they spend on their mobile devices.
Dr David Schwebel, an injury prevention expert from the University of Alabama said that children have a natural risk to hurt themselves if they are not properly watched by an adult.
“If the adult is distracted, clearly the risk is increased. We know that drivers and pedestrians are more at risk when they use devices. It’s a fairly small leap to suggest that supervisors are distracted,” he said.
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In the US, a 35-year-old woman was charged with reckless endangerment in the second degree and risk of injury to a minor after her friend’s two-year-old son who she was minding almost drowned in a hotel pool while she fiddled with her phone, texting and looking at photos.
This is one of many cases in the US that has childcare experts and medical professionals concerned over the link between mobile phone use and child safety.
Your say: Do you get distracted by technology while supervising your children?
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