Distracted Parenting By Deborah Fallows
972 Words4 Pages
Distracted parenting is the newest hazard caused by the normalization of cell phone usage in our everyday life according to Deborah Fallows in her article “Papa, Don’t Text: The Perils of Distracted Parenting” originally published in The Atlantic. In an article directed at parents in the technological age, she claims that parents are spending more time focusing on their phones and less time interacting with their babies. This issue can potentially cause long-term problems for their children’s linguistic skills. Fallows herself has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard. She also includes research from two other reputable sources to further validate her claim. Fallows delivers her argument in a short article with appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos, but her article lacks any real opinions put forth by the author, which weakens the impact of the piece. Fallows begins her article by recounting a walk she took with her grandson, immediately making herself both relatable and personally involved in the subject matter. She explains how she noticed all of the others parents using their phones rather than interacting with their babies. Due to the fact that Fallows is a linguist she began to wonder about the impact that interacting with your phone rather than your child has on their speech development. Once she began to research the subject she found a study done published in the Pediatrics journal and two studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.