Is Multitasking with Mobile Helping Mothers?

Mothers are a highly digital cohort by multiple measures—internet penetration, smartphone ownership, social network usage, etc. It helps them accomplish the multitudinous tasks of motherhood while also giving them some escape from those demands. But all this digital usage (and the multitasking it often entails) can sometimes aggravate as well as reduce the pressures of their day, according to a new eMarketer report, “Mothers and Digital Media: Useful, Yes; a Panacea, No.”

Smartphones help mothers accomplish practical tasks while also letting them grab fragments of “me time” throughout the day. Little wonder BabyCenter found about six in 10 mothers describing the device as “like my backup brain.”

According to Google Consumer Surveys in April 2014, “New and expecting parents are 2.7 times more likely than non-parents to use a smartphone as their primary device.” This primary status is reflected in the range of functions the phones routinely perform for mothers. BabyCenter found that 90% of smartphone mothers said they text daily. Large numbers also used it that often to access social media, play games and watch videos.

With all they need to do, plus some of what they want to do, it stands to reason that mothers are chronic multitaskers. But while their facility in multitasking is an accomplishment of sorts, it is not one they always relish.

If a mother cannot quite recall what happened in a TV show she just watched, it is not hard to see why. Edison Research’s survey found 76% of mothers share their TV-viewing time with internet usage, up from 66% in 2013. Yahoo’s report said 57% of mothers multitask TV and internet usage daily. In the BabyCenter survey, large numbers of mothers reported using mobile devices “all the time” or “often” while watching TV.

Multitasking allows mothers to cram more socializing and more entertainment into their day. But multitasking is also part of the problem. When mothers use smartphones to grab some “me time” while nominally hanging out with their kids, this kind of multitasking can bring a dose of parental guilt—or, alternatively, glaring disapproval from people who think the smartphoning parent ought to feel guilty.

Courtesy of eMarketer