The Association Between Parent’s Mobile Device Use and Physical Activity

Background. The rapid increase in mobile technology has allowed smartphones to be used almost anywhere, but a potential disadvantage of these mobile devices is the displacement of physical activity. Parents of young children are already struggling to reach higher intensities of physical activity and mobile devices might make this worse. However, most existing research on similar topics look at adults without children or uses subjective measures only. Therefore, this study aims to (1) quantify objective mobile device use from a sample of parents with preschool age children; (2) describe the duration and intensity of parents’ physical activity and inactive behavior; and (3) to explore the relationship between parents’ physical activity and mobile phone use. Methods. Accelerometry (Axivity AX3) and Chronicle mobile device use data from 35 parent-child dyads who participated in a larger pilot trial were used for this secondary analysis. Accelerometry and mobile device use minutes were aggregated to the day level for each participant. Pearson correlations were used to explore the relationship between mobile device use minutes, and minutes of inactive, light, moderate, and vigorous physical activity. Additionally, multiple regression analyses were conducted to control for covariates (parent and child age, child biological sex, and household income). Results. We found that the 35 parents in this analysis averaged 354.8 minutes of mobile device use per day. They also had 652.5 inactive minutes, 215.1 light, 114.7 moderate, and 1.2 minutes of physical activity per day. Both Pearson correlations and multiple regression analyses revealed non-significant associations between the mobile device use minutes and the physical activity intensities. Conclusion. These findings suggest mobile device use alone may not be a key factor associated with physical activity in determining the time parents spend in physical activity and each intensity. Future studies with larger sample sizes are needed to replicate this finding.