Reading Exercise

Name: Arthur Persada Heryana Student ID: 201910230311263

Name: Wily Tri Kuncahyo Student ID: 201910230311284

The Dangers of Distracted Parenting

When it comes to children’s development, parents should worry less about kids’ screen time—
and more about their own. Smartphones have led to so many problems —car fatalities, sleep disturbances,
empathy loss, relationship problems—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than
the things they do. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated.
Despite an increase in the percentage of women in the workforce, mothers today surprisingly
spend more time caring for their children than mothers did in the 1960s. But the engagement between
parents and child is increasingly low-quality. Parents are constantly present in their children’s lives
physically, but they are less emotionally in harmony. Substantial evidence suggests that many types of
screen time (especially those involving fast-paced or violent imagery) are damaging to young brains.
Indeed, the new parental-interaction style can interrupt an ancient emotional cueing system, whose
hallmark is responsive communication, the basis of most human learning.
A problem therefore arises when the emotionally adult-child relationship system is interrupted—
by a text, for example, or a quick check-in on Instagram. In the early 2010s, researchers in Boston
secretly observed study brought 225 mothers and their approximately 6-year-old children into a familiar
setting and videotaped their interactions as each parent and child were given foods to try. During the
observation period, a quarter of the mothers spontaneously used their phone, and those who did, initiate
substantially fewer verbal and nonverbal interactions with their child.
Smartphone use has been associated with a familiar sign of addiction. Distracted adults grow
irritable when their phone use is interrupted; they do not only miss emotional cues but actually misread
them. A tuned-out parent may be quicker to anger than an engaged one, assuming that a child is trying to
be manipulative when, in reality, she just wants attention. We seem to have stumbled into the worst
model of parenting imaginable—always present physically, yet only fitfully present emotionally. Young
children will do a lot to get adult’s attention, and if we don’t change our behavior, they will attempt to do
it for us; we can expect to see a lot more tantrums as today’s toddlers’ age into school. The truth is, we
don’t really know how much our kids will suffer when we fail to engage.
Adapted from: Kristakis, Erika. 2018. The Dangers of Distracted Parenting.
Task 1
Decide whether the following information is true or false based on the text. Thick () True if the
information is correct, and thick False if the information is incorrect.

No Information True False

1 Parents should worry about their own
screen time rather than about their 
children’s.
2 Mothers nowadays spend less time caring
for their children than mothers did in the 
1960s.
3 In the early 2010s, researchers in Boston
secretly conducted a study bringing 225
mothers and their approximately 6-year-old 
children into a familiar setting and recorded
their interactions.
4 Smartphone use mostly has a close relation to 
a familiar sign of addiction.

Task 2
Answer the following questions.
1) Based on your understanding, please explain what happened in the study conducted in
Boston (2010).

Answer : In my understanding is secretly observed study brought 225 mothers and their
approximately 6-year-old children into a familiar setting and videotaped their interactions as
each parent and child were given foods to try. during the observation period, a quarter of 225
mothers spontaneously used their phone, and those who did, initiate substantially fewer verbal
and nonverbal interactions with their child.

2) What is your personal opinion about the text that you have just read? Please give me 4-5
sentences about this.

Answer : In my opinian is i’m agree with the dangers of distracted parenting, if the parent use
smartphone when with their child, parent will be not 100 percent attentive to their children and
bad impact on children’s social and emotional development, so for parent set aside time to be
focused on your children, ignore the push notifications and message alerts, and show them how
important they are in your life.