How to Use Your Phone Less Around Your Baby

The short version: You can use your phone near your baby, and an occasional scroll during a feed will not harm them. What babies notice is your attention. Small studies have found that babies get more upset and play less while a parent is absorbed in a phone, and that feeds are a little less chatty when a phone is out. So the goal is a few protected moments each day rather than zero phone use. Pick one or two times to keep phone-free (a feed, bath time, the first hour after waking), give the phone a fixed home away from where you sit with the baby, turn on Do Not Disturb when you want to be fully present, and let a schedule close your feeds at those times so you do not have to rely on willpower at 3am.

It is the 4am feed. The room is dark apart from one rectangle of light, and you are reading a thread about sleep regressions with your thumb while the baby works away at the bottle or the breast. You look down and the baby is looking straight up at you. You have no idea how long they have been doing that.

We have been in that chair. Some of us have read entire news cycles during night feeds, mostly because staying awake was the only goal and the phone was the only thing within reach. So this guide comes without a lecture. Night feeds are long, the days are lonely, and a phone is often how new parents stay connected to the adult world. The aim here is to make a few moments a day easier to keep for the two of you.

Can I use my phone near my baby?

Yes. Two separate worries tend to get mixed up here, and it helps to pull them apart.

The first is radio waves. Health agencies have looked hard at this, and the weight of evidence has not linked phone signals to health problems. We go through the research in is using your phone near your baby harmful?, including what the UK's health agency suggests if you want to cut exposure anyway.

The second is attention. This is where the research has something useful to say, and it is the part this guide is about. It is also the part you can do something about without throwing your phone in a drawer for a year.

What the research found about parents' phones and babies

The studies here are small, and most of them show links rather than proof. They are still worth knowing, partly because they are less alarming than the headlines that sometimes come with them.

Babies notice when your attention goes to the phone. In a 2018 study in Developmental Science, Sarah Myruski, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary and colleagues watched 50 mothers and babies aged about 7 to 24 months. Mothers played with their baby, then switched to their phone for a short spell, then went back to playing. While the mothers were on their phones, babies showed more distress and explored the room less. Babies whose mothers said they used their phones more in daily life also recovered less fully once play started again. It was one small lab study, and it measured a short moment. It does tell us that babies register the switch.

Feeds get a little quieter. Alison Ventura and colleagues at Cal Poly asked 25 mothers to breastfeed their babies in the lab twice, once while using a phone or tablet and once without. During the digital media session, mothers did less of the talking, smiling and back-and-forth that the researchers call "cognitive growth fostering." Some babies were less responsive to their mothers in that session too. The authors were careful to say that some aspects of the feed changed and others did not.

Distracted feeds are very common. In an earlier study, Ventura's team asked 75 mothers of babies under six months to keep feeding diaries. The mothers reported being distracted nearly half the time while feeding, often by a device. If that sounds like you, you are in large company.

Interruptions add up for older kids. For toddlers and preschoolers, Brandon McDaniel and Jenny Radesky surveyed 170 families and found that parents who reported more phone interruptions during time with their child also reported more behaviour problems such as whining and quick tempers. The survey cannot say which came first. A child who is hard work all day can send a tired parent to the phone, too.

One more thing helps keep this in proportion. The developmental psychologist Ed Tronick, who created the original still-face experiment, spent decades showing that parents and babies are out of step a lot of the time, even in families where everything is going well. In The Power of Discord, written with the paediatrician Claudia Gold, he argues that the repair matters most: noticing the baby has drifted, looking back, picking up where you left off. A glance at your phone followed by a return to your baby is that same ordinary cycle.

How to use your phone less around your baby

Start with one or two of these. Most parents find that one protected moment a day makes the rest of the day feel easier, which makes the next change easier too.

Pick your phone-free moments

Trying to be phone-free all day with a newborn is a recipe for guilt. Choose a few moments instead, and make them the ones where your baby is most likely to be looking at you:

• One feed a day. The first feed of the morning is a good pick for many parents, because you are less desperate to stay awake than at 3am. Talk, hum, or just watch. Your baby will do the rest.
• Bath time. Hands are wet anyway. This one is easy to keep.
• Nappy changes. Babies are face up and close. A short song or a bit of narration ("now the left foot") is the kind of back-and-forth the feeding studies measured.
• The first few minutes after a nap. When your baby wakes and looks for you, let them find your face first.

For the night feeds, give yourself permission. If reading on your phone is what gets you through 3am, keep doing it. Turn the brightness right down, and look up now and then.

Give the phone a home

Where the phone lives decides how often you pick it up. If it sits on the arm of the sofa next to the feeding pillow, you will reach for it on autopilot.

• Pick one spot for it during your phone-free moments, ideally across the room or in another room: a shelf, the kitchen counter, a basket by the door.
• Keep a feeding basket with what you would otherwise use the phone for nearby: water, a snack, a paper book, a muslin, the TV remote if you like a show during feeds.
• Use a cheap clock or a kitchen timer for feed times so you do not need the phone to check the time. Every time you check the time on a phone, a notification is waiting.

Silence the pull

Most phone pickups start with a buzz. Fewer buzzes means fewer pickups.

• Turn off notifications for everything except calls and messages from people you care about. Social apps, shopping apps and news apps can all wait.
• Use Do Not Disturb or a Focus mode during your phone-free moments. The AAP suggests this too: it recommends screen-free times and places at home such as meals and bedtime, and turning on do not disturb when you want uninterrupted time together.
• Move the stickiest apps off your home screen. If short-video or social apps take you longest to put down, put them in a folder on the last page.

Let a schedule do the remembering

New-parent brain is real. You will forget the plan by Tuesday, and that is fine, because a schedule can remember it for you.

Both iPhone and Android let you close chosen apps at set times of day. Our guide to blocking apps for certain hours has the steps for iOS 27, iOS 26 and earlier, and Android. A schedule for the morning feed, bath time and the hour before bed covers most of the moments above. Keep calls, messages, the camera and any baby-tracking app open, so you can still ring the health visitor or take a photo of the first smile.

We built Unglue for this kind of plan. It blocks the apps you choose, and they open again when you earn minutes with something in real life: a walk with the pram, a few pages of a book, five minutes of floor time with the baby. On iPhone it uses Apple's Screen Time framework, and you can schedule blocking for the hours you want to protect. If you would like the plan to hold on a tired day, Buddy Code lets your partner hold the code needed to loosen it. It is an app to help you use your phone less, which we know is a little funny.

Tell your baby what you are doing

This sounds odd with a baby, but it helps. The AAP's tips for parents suggest telling your kids what you are doing when you use a device around them. "I'm just texting Grandma that you're awake" turns a silent screen into a moment of talk. By the time your baby is a toddler, it also shows them that the phone is a tool you pick up for a reason.

Make it a plan for both of you

If you have a partner, the phone-free moments work better as a shared plan. One of you might take the phone-free morning feed while the other gets the phone-free bath. Our guide to when your partner is always on their phone covers how to raise it without it turning into a fight, which matters even more when both of you are short on sleep.

When the phone is a lifeline

For a lot of new parents, the phone is the main connection to other adults. Group chats with other parents, a sibling across the world, the forum that finally explained cluster feeding. Cutting that off would make the early months lonelier.

So keep the parts of the phone that help you. The feeds that leave you feeling worse (endless short videos, comparison on social media, news at 3am) are the ones worth closing during your baby's waking time. Messages and calls with people you love can stay.

If you notice you are on your phone most of the day because the days feel very long, very low or very anxious, that is worth paying attention to. Low mood, hopelessness or trouble bonding that lasts beyond the first two weeks after the birth can be a sign of postnatal depression, which the NHS describes as common. It is treatable. Your GP, doctor, midwife or health visitor is the right first call.

As your baby gets older

Babies start watching what you do with your phone well before they can reach for it. By the toddler years, your habits become their model. The AAP's advice for parents of young children is to be aware of where your attention is and what you may be role modelling.

When your baby is ready for screens of their own, our guides on screen time for toddlers and screen time for kids by age cover the guidance from the WHO and the AAP. For the bigger picture as they grow, there is our guide to reducing screen time for kids without battles. The habits you set now with your own phone make all of that easier later.

Common questions

Is it okay to use my phone while feeding my baby?

Yes, now and then. Nearly half of feeds involve some distraction, according to a Cal Poly diary study, and babies do fine. A small lab study found mothers talked and interacted less during feeds when using a phone, so keeping one or two feeds a day phone-free is a good habit. For night feeds, do what keeps you awake and safe.

Can I use my phone near my baby?

Yes. The FDA says the weight of scientific evidence has not linked phone radio waves with health problems, and a WHO-commissioned review of 63 studies found no link with brain cancer. The thing worth managing is attention, which is what most of this guide covers.

Does using my phone around my baby affect their development?

The research cannot say that yet. Small studies show babies get more upset and play less during the few minutes a parent is absorbed in a phone, and surveys link frequent phone interruptions with more behaviour problems in toddlers. Neither proves long-term harm. Looking back up and reconnecting is what matters, and every parent does that many times a day.

How do I stop feeling guilty about my phone use?

Pick one or two phone-free moments a day and protect those. Everything else is ordinary parenting. Guilt tends to grow when the goal is perfection, and no parent is fully present all day, with or without a phone.

Is it bad to use my phone in front of my newborn?

Newborns mostly need feeding, sleep, warmth and your face up close. A phone in your hand some of the time does not change that. Try to put it down when your baby is awake and looking at you, especially during feeds and changes.

Should I take photos and videos of my baby on my phone?

Of course. Those photos are some of the best things a phone does. If you find the camera pulling you into other apps, use a schedule that blocks the feeds and leaves the camera open.

Sources

• Myruski S. et al., "Digital disruption? Maternal mobile device use is related to infant social-emotional functioning", Developmental Science, 2018, doi:10.1111/desc.12610.
• Ventura A.K. et al., maternal digital media use during breastfeeding and the quality of feeding interactions, Appetite, 2019, summarised by the WIC Research Hub.
• Ventura A.K., Teitelbaum S., maternal distraction during breast and bottle feeding, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 2017, summarised by Cal Poly.
• McDaniel B.T., Radesky J.S., "Technoference: Parent distraction with technology and associations with child behavior problems", Child Development, 2018, PMC5681450.
• Tronick E., Gold C., The Power of Discord, Little, Brown Spark, 2020.
• American Academy of Pediatrics, Tips for Parents in the Digital Age, HealthyChildren.org.
• NHS, Postnatal depression.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Do Cell Phones Pose a Health Hazard?