Objective: The ubiquity of technology in contemporary society has enabled electronic devices to invade family life, leading to the impact of technology on family environments and children’s behaviour and mental health to be an emerging public health issue. Research associates frequent parental digital distraction with diminished parent-child interactions, which may predispose children’s internalising and externalising behaviours. Correspondingly, the objective of the current study is to understand the impact of parental digital technology use on young people. Associations will be explored between parents’ use of digital technology use and children’s use of technology, deviant behaviours and mental health, within the Welsh context.

Design and Measure: A scoping review was undertaken to explore existing literature surrounding the impact of parental digital distraction on the mental health and deviant behaviours of young people. Informed by the results of the scoping review, a cross-sectional study was completed across secondary schools in North Wales. Drawing upon existing data collection tools, an online questionnaire was designed to examine the effect of adolescent perceptions of their parent’s digital distraction on adolescents’ own digital distraction; deviant behaviours including aggression, bullying, delinquency and drug and alcohol use; and mental health including anxiety and depression, as mediated through perceived parental warmth.

Participants: A total of 673 adolescents aged between 12 and 15 completed the online questionnaire across three secondary schools within North Wales. Data was collected between March 2022 and June 2022.

Results: Findings show that perceived parental digital distraction was reported by one in three adolescents (32.4%). Almost half of all adolescents (49.1%) also reported being digitally distracted during interactions with their parents. Higher parental digital distraction scores were associated with greater levels of adolescent digital distraction, deviant behaviours and poorer mental health. Further, adolescent perceptions of parental digital distraction were related to decreased feelings of parental warmth. Interestingly, parental warmth did not mediate the relationship between parental digital distraction and adolescent outcomes.

Conclusion: The present study advances the understanding of parental digital distraction, suggesting that parents should be aware of the environment in which they use electronic devices, due to the potential behavioural and health risks to adolescents. Previous literature documents that behaviours children establish during adolescence will track into adulthood, hence, understanding the positive and negative impact of technology on children’s behaviour and mental health will help to design public health guidelines and interventions to aid the combat the negative effects in order to improve children’s health.