Changing Times Together? A Time‐Diary Analysis of Family Time in the Digital Age in the United Kingdom
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12564 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
K M University of Oxford
S C University of Warwick∗
Changing Times Together? A Time-Diary Analysis
of Family Time in the Digital Age in the
United Kingdom
Objective: This study examines the impact
of digital mobile devices on different aspects
of family time in the United Kingdom.
Background: Recent years have witnessed
increasing concerns surrounding the con-
sequences of the widespread diffusion
of Internet-enabled mobile devices such
as smartphones for family well-being. How-
ever, research examining the extent to which
mobile devices have inuenced family time
remains limited.
Method: Using nationally representative
time-diary data spanning a period of unprece-
dented technological change (U.K. 2000
and 2015 Time Use Surveys), the authors
construct a set of novel family time mea-
sures that capture varying degrees of family
University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UQ
(k.mullan@aston.ac.uk).
∗University of Warwick,Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Marriage and Familypub-
lished by WileyPeriodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Coun-
cil on Family Relations.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu-
tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
Key Words: adolescence, childhood, children,families, fam-
ily research, technology.
togetherness and examine changes in these
measures over time. Novel diary data are also
analyzed to explore the occurrence of mobile
device use during different aspects of family
time in 2015.
Results: Children and parents spent more time
at the same location in 2015, and there was no
change in the time they spent doing activities
together. However, there was a marked increase
of alone-together time, when childrenwere at the
same location as their parents, but did not report
that they were copresent with them. The results
show that children and parents used mobile
devices during all aspects of family time in 2015,
but device use was notably concentrated during
alone-together time.
Conclusion: This study provides an empirical
basis for documenting the impact of mobile
device use on family time.
The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented
diffusion of mobile devices such as smartphones
and tablets in advanced economies, alongside
the arrival of powerful Internet connections.
According to research by the Pew Research
Center, approximately three quarters of Ameri-
can adults own a smartphone (Poushter, 2016),
with one in four reporting going online “con-
stantly,” and 43% several times a day (Perrin
& Jiang, 2018). Similarly, more than two thirds
of adults and children in the United Kingdom
Journal of Marriage and Family 81 (August 2019): 795–811 795
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12564
796 Journal of Marriage and Family
own a smartphone, whereas one in two house-
holds own at least one tablet (Ofcom, 2015).
Alongside these trends, academic and public
debates around the perils of technology and
ubiquitous connectivity for individual and soci-
etal well-being have been increasing (Palmer,
2015; Turkle, 2011; Twenge, 2017; Wellman
& Haythornthwaite, 2008). However, despite
the fact that family scholars have long iden-
tied technological change as one of the key
developments likely to inuence family func-
tioning (Daly, 1996; Ogburn & Nimkoff, 1955;
Seltzer et al., 2005), research on the impact
of contemporary information and communica-
tion technologies on family life remains limited
(Carvalho, Francisco, & Relvas, 2015; Lanigan,
2009; Sharaievska, 2017). A number of stud-
ies have examined Internet or mobile device
usage in relation to different family outcomes
(Carvalho et al., 2015). The results are mixed,
with some studies underlining a positive role
of Internet or mobile devices in facilitating
the communication and coordination of activi-
ties of family members (Chesley & Fox, 2012;
Kennedy & Wellman, 2007; Ling, 2012), and
others revealing negative effectsfor family rela-
tionships and the perceptions of family cohe-
sion (Mesch, 2006; Sharaievska & Stodolska,
2017). However, we still lack evidence on the
extent to which the advent of mobile devices
such as smartphones has altered time alloca-
tion and daily activities in the family context.
As a result, propositions surrounding the emer-
gence of solitary device use and individual-
ized screen-based media consumption within
the family home remain largely untested (Daly,
1996; Livingstone, 2002).
This study assesses the impact of mobile
digital devices on family time by analyzing data
from the U.K. 2000 to 2001 Time Use Survey
(UKTUS 2000; Ipsos-RSL, Ofce for National
Statistics, 2003) and 2014 to 2015 Time Use Sur-
vey (UKTUS 2015; Gershuny & Sullivan,2017).
Using matched diary data of children and par-
ents, we propose a novel set of family time mea-
sures, moving beyond existing studies that solely
rely on parental diary records to construct a uni-
dimensional measure of family time (Genadek,
Flood, & Roman, 2016; Neilson & Stanfors,
2017). An innovative approach that prioritizes
children’s perspectives and encapsulates vary-
ing degrees of family togetherness is applied,
allowing us to test propositions around the
emergence of alone-together time, attributed to
the use of mobile devices and characterized by a
lack of close interaction among family members
(Turkle, 2011). Spanning a period of unprece-
dented diffusion of mobile devices among adults
and children in the United Kingdom (Ofcom,
2015), the data allow us to assess the extent to
which changes in different types of family time
including alone-together time are associated
with recent technological change, controlling
for other factors. A unique strength of our data is
the availability of contextual diary information
on mobile device use in the 2014 to 2015 survey
that measures the concurrent use of mobile
device use during other activities, which cannot
be accurately captured by “stylized” time-use
questions in conventional social surveys( Hamp-
ton, 2017). This provides us with nationally
representative evidence on the way mobile
device use is woven into family life in contem-
porary Britain, allowing us to better understand
trends in family time between 2000 and 2015.
To our knowledge, ours is the rst study that
bridges insights from time-diary research and
literature on the effects of mobile device use,
placing technological change in the foreground
of sociological accounts of family time.
M D D F T
Although there is no agreed denition of fam-
ily time, fundamental to its conceptualization is
the notion that it encapsulates different activ-
ities with varying levels of interaction among
family members (Daly, 1996). This can range
from time spent in shared meals or leisure activ-
ities deliberately aimed to foster a sense of fam-
ily togetherness, to relatively unnoticed time as
family members go about their daily routines
(Christensen, James, & Jenks, 2000), what Daly,
(1996) referred to as the “coincidental sharing of
space and time that arises from the intersection
of busy lives” (p. 67).
Earlier theoretical accounts identied a core
tension surrounding the inuence of technology
on family time in that it can bring family mem-
bers together while keeping them apart (Daly,
1996). Indeed, technology opens up opportu-
nities for shared leisure activities, especially
within the home, but it also provides room for
family members to engage in separate individu-
alized activities while being together at the same
location. For example, although technologies
such as cell phones and home computers have
blurred the spatial boundaries between work and
To continue reading
Request your trial