When the Tablet Replaces the Togetherness

I was researching screen time on Sunday evening after the same pattern played out that we had in the school holidays. The dynamic was familiar. And I was tired of it.

You plan a chill day and the tablet keeps creeping in. Have you noticed this too?

We had a morning baking together, my daughter and I. Flour was everywhere on the worktop and we were taking it in turns to ask Alexa to play our chosen song, laughing at each other's choices, singing badly (well I was anyway).

And then the cake went in. Timer set. Twenty minutes to wait.

Before I had even picked up the mixing bowl to wash it, my girl was on the sofa. Tablet in hand, already somewhere else entirely.

I asked her to come and help me tidy up. She didn't hear me. I asked again. Slight irritation now, hers and mine. By the time the cake was ready, the mood in the kitchen had shifted.

What had started as connection had ended in conflict. I was frustrated. She was frustrated. And I had spent more energy managing the tablet situation than I had actually baking.

In the end, I shouted and hid it. Told her it was banned for the rest of the day.

The harmony I love at home was gone.

Later, I told her I was sad that she couldn't stay with me in the waiting time, in the clearing up time.

I talked about how, when I spent time with my nan, we were properly hanging out. Not disappearing from each other every time there was a pause. I explained how our brains need downtime. That you can simply relax rather than fill every second with a screen.

The Walk to School

The next day, it's Monday morning, we're walking to school, just the two of us. I shared some of what I'd been reading, about what screens do to our brains, and why it's good to have the gaps between things, the quiet moments, the waiting.

I told her how lovely it is to just hang out together like we do when we're walking. To not need to fill every pause with screen time.

She looked at me very directly and said: "That's not how my brain works, Mummy."

I paused. Because she wasn't being rude, or defiant, or dismissive. She was being completely, disarmingly honest.

I explained why it's good to go without it, so that brain can rest and remember that you don't need it all the time.

And we walked on. Together. Just talking. No devices. No agenda. Just a Monday morning and two people side by side.

That walk was everything I had been trying to create in the kitchen the day before. And all it took was leaving the tablet at home.

What the Research Actually Says

I want to be clear from the start: I am not anti-technology. I am a sociologist by background, a life coach by training, and a researcher by nature. I come at this with curiosity and a genuine want to get it right for my family and for my child.

To enjoy technology, but not let it take away from our humanness, our need to connect, to bond, to enjoy each other's company.

Tablets and phones have genuine value. Educational apps support literacy and numeracy. Digital tools build skills children genuinely need. For children with additional needs, the right technology can be transformative. Used well, with intention and adult involvement, screens can be a positive part of childhood.

But it's the filling of every gap that worries me. And it turns out the research worries about it too.

Developmental scientists talk about something called serve and return. It's the back-and-forth exchange between a child and an adult that builds language, attachment, and social development. It's as simple as a child pointing at something and a parent responding. A question asked and answered. A moment of restlessness that becomes a conversation.

A minute at the kitchen sink that turns into something quietly significant.

When screens fill those gaps, the moment ends. Not because a child doesn't want to connect, but because her nervous system has been trained to find the gap intolerable.

To escape the pause rather than inhabit it.

A 2024 study published in JAMA Pediatrics tracked 220 families over two and a half years, using speech recognition technology to measure talk in the family home. Their findings were stark.

"Young children's exposure to screen time is interfering with opportunities to talk and interact in their home environment." - Brushe et al., Screen Time and Parent-Child Talk When Children Are Aged 12 to 36 Months, JAMA Pediatrics, 2024

At age three, just one additional minute of screen time was associated with nearly seven fewer adult words, five fewer child vocalisations, and one less back-and-forth conversational turn per day. Children averaging close to three hours of screen time daily, the actual average for this age group in the study, were potentially missing out on over 1,100 adult words and nearly 200 conversational turns every single day.

The researchers called it "technoference": technology-based interference with the very interactions that build a child's brain, language, and sense of being known.

You can read the full study here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38436942/

We're not just talking about hours in front of a screen. We're talking about what disappears in the small moments in between. And there's more.

Research consistently shows that when children spend more time on devices, parents report feeling less close to their child. Not because love has diminished. But because the infrastructure of connection, the talking about the day, the sharing of memories, the back-and-forth, quietly disappears.

We spend more time trying to get the child off the tablet than we do having enjoyable, everyday, loving conversations.

That is what frustrated me on Sunday.

And that is why parenting starts to feel like a battle rather than a bond.

The Brain That Cannot Sit Still

My daughter told me her brain doesn't work the way I was describing. And I have sat with that, honestly and without dismissing it.

I wonder sometimes whether either or both of us has some degree of neurodivergence. What I notice is that we are genuinely different.

I need quiet. I need alone time. I need space to think and recover.

She loves the TV on, music playing, the tablet in her hand. She will create elaborate sensory circuits around the house, floor is lava, sofa cushions as stepping stones. Her nervous system seeks stimulation, movement, input.

That is worth honouring. And it also helps me understand what I am working with.

But neuroscience is clear that high-stimulation screen content: gaming, short-form video, endless scrolling. It floods the brain's reward system with dopamine.

Do this consistently, and the brain adapts. It raises its own baseline. The gaps that used to feel neutral start to feel uncomfortable. The waiting that used to be ordinary starts to feel unbearable.

And here is the wider context that I think too rarely gets named: the nuclear family, with extended family living further away, childcare more formalised, and most mothers now working, has changed what childhood looks like at home.

You can't make spontaneous, casual arrangements with other mums the way a previous generation could. You can't just let the kids pop in and out of each others homes in the holidays or on a weekend like we used to.

As modern mothers, we have been handed the expectation that we will ensure our children are learning and developing whilst also managing the house and often a career.

We can't be our children's everything. We can't give them our constant attention. And so, gradually, screens have filled the space that community did before.

This doesn't make us bad mothers. It makes us human ones, navigating a world that was not designed with modern day Mum life in mind.

But here is what the research also says: boredom is not a problem to solve. It is a developmental tool.

When children have nothing to do, the brain's default mode network activates. It's the same system responsible for daydreaming, creativity, reflection, and imagination.

The child lying on the floor staring at the ceiling is not wasting time. She is processing. Wondering. Becoming.

When we fill every gap with a screen rather than pencils and paper, nature, or simply nothing at all, we take that calm downtime away. We take away the restlessness that leads to invention, the discomfort that builds resilience, the quiet that allows a child to meet herself.

And we break the connection that was right there, in the waiting.

The Moments That Matter Most

Research on family wellbeing points repeatedly to the same ordinary moments. The mealtimes. The walks. The bedtime routines. The car journeys.

These are the places where children learn that they are known, that they are heard, that they belong. Where the questions they are too shy to ask in a busy moment finally surface. Where you find out what they actually think.

Family routines and rituals, even simple ones, are associated with better emotional regulation, stronger attachment, reduced anxiety, and greater academic confidence in children. Not because of anything magical. Because they create predictable space for connection.

And that space is exactly what screens crowd out.

The washing up after the baking. The twenty minutes while the cake cooks. The walk to school. These are not nothing. These are everything, if we let them be.

What I Am Learning (and Still Working Out)

I don't have this perfectly figured out. I hid a tablet after shouting in frustration at the weekend and I am sad to admit to that.

But I do know this.

My daughter's brain is not broken. It has adapted to something that is everywhere and endlessly compelling. And part of my job, not as a perfect mother, but as a present one, is to help her practise the thing her brain has forgotten it can do.

To sit in the gap. To let it be quiet. To discover that is enough.

I want her to know that she is so much more than what entertains her.

And on a Monday morning, walking to school with no particular agenda, she showed me exactly who she is. Thoughtful, honest, curious, and, when we give ourselves the chance, genuinely wonderful company.

That is the connection I am wanting to protect. For me. For her. For us.

I'd love to know, does this resonate with you?

Do you worry that screen time is taking over your child's conversation, imagination and creativity?

Do you notice a lack of chat and connection when screens fill all the gaps?

Come and tell me over on Instagram. I'm at @rebeccahogan_ and I read every single DM and comment.

This is a conversation I think we all need to be having.

Rebecca

I explore more in the next post - Is My Child Neurodivergent or Just Screen-Dependent? (And Does It Matter?)

I help mothers rediscover the woman beneath the mum, reclaim their joy and build a life they love. Not someday. Now.

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