Between overflowing schedules, constant notifications and evening fatigue, many parents feel like they are no longer really available for their children. During this time, the screens occupy the space: living room, table, bedroom. This blurring of the link has a name: the parent-child technoference.
For the New York psychologist Erica Komisarspecialist in child development, this is not a simple detail of comfort. Podcast guest Triggernometryquoted by NonSoloFesta, she warns:
“If you’re not there to stimulate your child, to interact with them, to just have basic interaction, talk to them, read something to them… then they’re going to have to interact with their technology“.
When we know, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, that approximately 80% of brain development occurs before the age of 3, the message hits hard.
What Erica Komisar really says about parental presence
In this same exchange, Erica Komisar suggests rethinking professional ambition: looking for more efficient work to free up time with children rather than overtime. She reminds us that free time is not entirely personal. For her,
“When you come home at night, you belong to your children. Your weekends belong to your children”. A very clear hierarchy of priorities.
She knows that many parents do not have the choice of full-time work, but she insists on the need to compensate:
- Being truly present when you are at home;
- Limit additional tasks;
- Set aside a few non-negotiable rituals of playing, talking, reading.
The idea is not to make people feel guilty, rather to make visible what is otherwise immediately replaced by the screen.
Technoference: when the smartphone cuts the thread of the exchange
Children and Screens describes the
technoference like those moments when technology intervenes in daily parent-child exchanges. The New Jersey Department of Children and Families estimates that parents check their smartphones about 67 times a day and that 46 percent of teens find their parent distracted when talking to them.
Over time, the quality of conversations, glances and joint attention erodes.
For the American Academy of Pediatrics, the child develops through this constant back and forth with the adult, this “serve-and-return” where he sends a signal and receives a response. Research published in 2026 on the Wiley website distinguishes three levels: distraction, interruption, then “disruption” of the relationship when these cuts are repeated without repair. Coming back to the child, naming the interruption and restarting the exchange then becomes a key reflex.
Reducing technoference without demonizing screens
Without condemning work or technology, Erica Komisar reminds us that “spending more time with children is a priority”. The American Academy of Pediatrics invites families to build a “family media plan”: identify a few truly screen-free moments in the evenings and weekends, when the child no longer needs to look for a digital substitute for the parent.