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This is Life Kit for Parenting Screen Time Guide, Part 3, Parents and Screens.

I'm your host, Anya Kamenetz, an NPR education reporter, and the author of a book called The Art of Screen Time.

And I want to start by telling you about this small study that came out a few years ago, and it kind of went viral.

How viral?

Well, I'll let the host on the Today Show tell you about it.

We're starting for something that a lot of parents will relate to, want to listen to, some sobering advice for distracted parents.

And the advice says put down the cell phone.

A new study out just this morning's...

In a nutshell, the researchers went out to fast food restaurants all over Boston.

And they found that out of 55 family groups observed at the restaurants, in 40 of them, the grownup was on their phone or tablet at some point during the meal.

40 out of 55, that's 73%.

And the more all these grownups were sucked into their phones, the more the kids seemed to act up to get their attention.

And the moms and dads responded to the kids not so great in a, quote, harsh, quote, robotic manner. One little boy put his hands

on a woman's face just to try to get her to look up from her tablet for a second and she

pushes little hands out of the way. This study really struck a nerve.

The news response to it was amazing.

It was so enormous.

Dr. Jenny Redesky, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at the University of Michigan,

did the study when she was still a research fellow.

...