A few weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk finishing up work when my daughter came into my office.
She said hi and started telling me about her day at camp.
I listened. I asked her a question. She told me a little more. We went back and forth for a minute or so before she left to go play and I finished my workday.
A completely normal interaction… except for one thing:
I don’t think I ever looked at her.
My eyes stayed on my computer while we talked.
And once I noticed myself doing it, I started seeing it more than I’d like to admit.
My wife will say something to me while I’m finishing an email. I answer without looking up.
My daughter will ask me a question while I’m doing something on my phone. I hear her. I think about what she said. I respond. But I keep looking at what I was doing.
Sometimes she comes over just to show me something, and I’ll catch myself saying, “Oh, cool!” before I’ve actually looked at it.
I’m not ignoring either of them, but it doesn’t feel right.
And that’s what makes this so interesting to me.
We’re talking. I’m listening. I’m responding. By almost any measure, we’re communicating.
We’re just not looking at each other.
And I’ve started wondering how much gets lost when that happens.
We’ve Missed Part of the Screen Time Conversation
As parents, we spend an enormous amount of time worrying about screens.
How much screen time should our kids get? When should they get a phone? What is Netflix or YouTube doing to their attention span? What will social media do to their mental health?
Those are important questions.
And increasingly, we’re asking questions about our own screen time too.
Are we spending too much time on our phones? Are they distracting us from our families? Are we scrolling when we could be playing with our kids or talking to our partners?
Those are important questions too.
But I think there’s another part of the screen time conversation we’re missing.
What happens when we’re together, but a screen still has our eyes?
Because that’s what some of my interactions with my daughter look like.
I’m not somewhere else scrolling instead of spending time with her.
I’m right there.
I’m listening. I’m responding. We’re having a conversation.
I’m just looking at my computer, or my phone, or my pad.
And that changes the interaction itself much more than we think.
A Conversation Is More Than Words
Quite a lot can happen in a conversation without anyone saying a word.
When we talk face-to-face, we’re constantly exchanging information through our eyes, facial expressions, gestures, and body language.
Our faces alone carry an extraordinary amount of information.
A smile. A furrowed brow. A flash of excitement. A hesitation you can see before someone answers.
Think about someone you know well saying, “I’m fine.”
You often don’t need another word to know they’re not… you see it in their face.
But our faces don’t just help us understand what someone else is communicating. They’re also communicating back.
My daughter tells me something she’s proud of and watches my face light up. She says something funny and sees me smile. She tells me something difficult and sees the concern on my face.
There’s a back-and-forth happening alongside the words.
And our eyes are part of that exchange too.
Where we look is itself a form of communication. Looking at someone signals something incredibly simple: You have my attention.
From very early in life, humans use gaze to coordinate attention with one another. We look where someone else is looking. We notice when someone is looking at us. Babies look toward their caregivers for information about what’s happening around them.
Researchers call this joint attention: the ability for two people to direct their attention toward the same thing and, importantly, know they’re sharing that attention.
It’s part of how we connect.
Which made me think differently about those conversations with my daughter while I’m looking at my computer.
The problem isn’t simply that she isn’t getting my eye contact as an indicator of my attention.
She’s not getting my face.
She’s missing my smile when she tells me something funny. The look of pride when she tells me what she accomplished. The concern on my face when something didn’t go well.
She can hear what I’m saying, but she can’t see how what she’s saying is affecting me.
And I’m missing her face too.
The words are still getting through, but an entire channel of the conversation has gone quiet.
When Technology Enters Our Conversations
Researchers even have a word for what happens when technology interferes with our interactions: technoference (yeah, I know… but that’s what they’ve named it).
Increasingly, researchers are studying what happens when parents use phones and other devices while interacting with their children. And the findings probably won’t surprise you.
When parents are on their phones, they tend to respond less to their children’s attempts to get their attention, have fewer conversational exchanges, and show less responsiveness. Research has also found that phone use can disrupt joint attention - that shared experience of two people directing their attention toward the same thing.
These may seem like tiny moments, but they’re part of the basic back-and-forth through which children learn, communicate, and connect with us.
And it isn’t just parents and kids.
In one fascinating experiment, just having a phone present (even if it was placed off to the side and not in use) during a face-to-face conversation led participants to report reduced feelings of closeness and relationship quality, with the effect being more pronounced when the conversation was meaningful.
Of course, none of this means that every glance at a screen is irreparably harming our relationships, but it does suggest that something changes when screens enter our interactions, even when we’re still physically together.
And I think that’s the part we tend to miss.
A screen doesn’t have to take us away from the people we love to interfere with our connection to them.
Sometimes it just has to take our eyes.
But Don’t Throw Out Your Phone
The obvious conclusion to all of this might be: put down your damn phone.
And sure, sometimes that’s probably good advice.
But we don’t need to completely remove technology from our lives to get some of this connection back.
I was looking at my computer when my daughter walked into my office because I was working.
Our jobs happen on screens. Our friends and families live in our phones. We navigate with them. Learn through them. Take pictures with them. Relax with them. Connect through them.
Technology is deeply embedded in modern life, and much of that is genuinely wonderful.
So no, I’m not going to always stop working when my daughter walks into the room. I’m not throwing away my phone. And I’m certainly not making our house screen-free.
I’m trying something much smaller.
I’m trying to look up.
My daughter walks into my office while I’m working.
Finish the sentence I’m typing. Then look up.
My wife starts telling me something while I’m checking my phone.
Look up.
A friend starts telling me something meaningful over dinner.
Look up.
My daughter runs over to show me something she made.
Look up.
Not forever.
Not even necessarily for the whole conversation.
But long enough to see the face in front of me. To let them see mine. To signal something incredibly simple: You have my attention.
The modern world is constantly pulling our eyes away from one another.
We don’t always need to remove the things pulling them away.
But we do need to get a little better at looking up.
~ Jamey
Your Friendly Next Door Neuroscientist
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