Cellphone use by parents may have a negative impact on children's mental health, psychologists are warning.
CBS San Francisco's CBS News affiliate did an informal survey on a playground and asked children how they feel when their parents are on the phone, and most of them said it made them feel sad.
Clinical psychologist and Harvard researcher, Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, told CBS San Francisco that the problem is in fact more widespread and the psychological impact is more significant.
"Children of all ages use the same adjectives to describe how they feel when they are competing with screens for their parent's attention," Adair said. "Angry, sad, frustrating, and lonely were the words used over and over."
Online international security company
AVG/Location Labs did a study and found that a third of children say their parents spend as much or more time with their phones as they do with them.
AVG/Location Labs also reported that 54 percent of kids said that their parents check their phones too much and 32 percent said that when their parents are distracted by their phones they feel unimportant.
Company CEO Tasso Roumeliotis told CBS that smartphones have an addictive quality.
"They are constructed that way and meant to notify you and trigger a dopamine addictive hit to your brain to react," he said.
Psychologists also say that parents react more harshly to their children when using their phones. In addition, Steiner-Adair told CBS said that they can also be a safety hazard.
"We've seen about a 22 percent spike in preventable accidents with young children and caretakers using their digital devices," she said.
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