Daily smartphone use predicts parent depressive symptoms, but parents' perceptions of responsiveness to their child moderate this effect

Smartphone use during caregiving has become increasingly common, especially around infants and very young children, and this use around young children has been linked with lower quality and quantity of parent-child interaction, with potential implications for child behavior, and parent-child attachment. To understand drivers and consequences of parent phone use, we were interested in the daily associations between parent phone use and depressed mood, as well as the potential for parent perceptions of their responsiveness toward their infant to alter the association between parent phone use and mood.