Maternal Smartphone Use and Regulatory Disorders of the Infant: A Post Hoc Analysis of the SKKIPPI Cohort Study

Infant regulatory disorders (RDs) describe the infants' difficulties in regulating their physiological and emotional states, manifesting in problems with sleeping, feeding, or excessive crying. A post hoc analysis of data from the German SKKIPPI cohort study investigated the association of maternal smartphone use and the occurrence of RDs.

In a randomly drawn sample from three local population registers, a self-administered online questionnaire was used to collect basic sociodemographic data, smartphone use behavior and the mother's subjective perception of the infant's RD. In case of psychosocial burden of the mother, a structured psychiatric-diagnostic interview (M.I.N.I.) was conducted and the Questionnaire for Crying, Feeding and Sleeping (SFS) was completed.

Of the 5954 parent-child dyads completing the online-questionnaire, 3.7% reported frequent smartphone use while interacting with the child, compared with 5.8% of the 972 mother-child dyads in the psychiatric interview. Among frequent smartphone users, 61.5% indicated RD compared to 41.6% of the infrequent users (p = 0.005). After adjustment for confounding by psychiatric disorder, educational level, single parent status, and age, perceived stress when interrupted during smartphone use was consistently associated with less favorable outcomes (OR of feeding easy 0.56, 95% CI 0.42; 0.75; OR of falling asleep easily 0.85, 95% CI 0.73; 0.99; OR of excessive crying 1.37, 95% CI 1.04; 1.81). RD based on the SFS was associated with elevated stress during smartphone use (OR 1.87, 95% CI 1.35; 2.58).

Maternal stress when smartphone use is interrupted is more strongly associated with early regulatory difficulties than frequency of smartphone use alone, indicating the importance of also considering emotional and contextual factors in the analysis of technology use during parent-child interactions.