Parent's Fears about Cell Phones and their Children are Exaggerated According to Duke Study, Yet both Parents and Children are Distracted by Devices

A study conducted by Duke University, found that the many fears parents have about their children losing face-to-face social abilities is unfounded.  They found that teenagers who have strong relationships face to face and spend a lot of time online, continue to build those strong social relationships online, in a positive manner.  At the same time, children who struggle with face-to-face relationships will most often struggle with relationships online.  Thus, teenagers continue to do what they have always done, they are just adding-in technology as a piece of their everyday social experiences.  As far as safety is concerned, most teenagers do not interact with strangers online, rather they are interacting with friends and family through their cell phones and mobile devices.  The one concern that was founded was teenagers sleeping with their phones and losing valuable sleep time to wake up and check their phone or stay up late texting.  Lack of sleep is a concern and with proper parenting structures around devices, such as "no devices in bedrooms" or "devices out of bedrooms by 9pm" could help to eliminate this issue.

Parent modeling is key.  In a recent report by CommonSenseMedia, parents were just as guilty as their children when it came to texting often and being distracted by their cell phones.  41% of teenagers feel their parents get distracted with their devices and don't pay attention to their children when they are with them.  While 77% of parents felt the same way about their children's device use.