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Parenting in a digital age: Exploring technoference and parent-infant connection

The impact of digital and mobile devices on everyday interactions – commonly called technoference – is increasingly well-documented, including in relation to parent-child interactions. Research over the past fifteen years has examined the effects of smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices on parent-child interaction and on child development.

Yet whilst we understand the risks of technoference, far less is known about the factors that lead to devices being used in ways that cause unwanted disruptions in family life, or the strategies families can use to reduce this technoference.

In 2025/6 we ran an open commissioning process to appoint a research partner to undertake participatory action research to:

  1. Develop a deeper and richer understanding of the factors that influence digital device use in families with babies and young children, and where this causes interference in parent-child interactions.
  2. Understand how families – both mothers, fathers (and other primary caregivers) and young children – see technoference as a challenge for them and what their goals are for reducing technoference.
  3. Facilitate families to share ideas and to identify and test practical strategies and solutions that help to achieve their goals for reducing technoference and support positive parent–child interactions and connection.
  4. Identify strategies that families find acceptable, helpful, and sustainable, and the context in which these strategies work. Recognise any ongoing contextual and environmental barriers and challenges for families trying to reduce technoference.
  5. Synthesise findings to capture research findings, insights into families’ lives, and actionable strategies that reduce technoference, recognising the varied experiences and needs of different families.
  6. Capture and disseminate learning in a way that enables organisations around the UK to develop evidence-based advice and practical solutions for parents and the practitioners who work with them.

We are pleased to announce that Coram, the UK’s first children’s charity that was set up in 1739, has been appointed.

The research will take place between March and December 2026, the findings expected in Spring 2027.