The Parents and Teens Technology and Relationships (PATTER)

Supported by the Mental Research Institute (MRI), the Parents and Teens Technology and Relationships (PATTER) Study—led by Dr. Miriam Brinberg and her team at The Ohio State University—was motivated by a question of growing relevance: how does technology—our most constant companion—reshape the intimate, everyday fabric of family life?

Over the past decade, conversations about teens and technology have filled headlines and dinner tables alike. We’ve worried about screen time, social media, and attention spans. But what Dr. Brinberg noticed, missing was the relationship itself—the invisible thread between parent and child—and how technology might be both tugging at and strengthening that bond.

The study began with a hunch that the digital tools designed to keep families connected might also be redrawing the lines between safety and autonomy. “Parents’ ability to monitor their adolescents’ whereabouts has never been easier,” Dr. Brinberg explains, “but ease isn’t the same as effectiveness.”

Drawing on daily experiences of 142 parent-adolescent pairs, the PATTER team asked families to reflect each evening for 28 days on their communication, closeness, and technology use. Parents reported whether they had used surveillance apps that day; adolescents shared how autonomous they felt and whether parents respected their privacy. What emerged was a nuanced picture: on days after parents used surveillance apps, teens felt like their privacy had been violated—but they did not necessarily feel less autonomous.

In other words, the digital leash may not impact autonomy outright, but it does decrease the space where independence grows. The findings, Dr. Brinberg notes, highlight a tension familiar to many modern parents: the desire to know one’s child is safe without suffocating their need to explore.

Smartphones also tell a story of how families reach across distance—and stumble in proximity. When parents and teens were apart, quick and responsive texting built a sense of connection; messages became a small but powerful gesture of care and the feeling that someone was there.

Yet the same devices, when used in shared physical spaces, told a different story. Parents and adolescents alike reported lower levels of relationship satisfaction when technology interfered with in-person interactions. The phenomenon researchers call technoference—phones on the dinner table, glances at notifications mid-conversation—proved to be more than a minor irritation. It subtly eroded the shared presence that family connection depends on.

The PATTER Study’s findings reveal that technology isn’t cast as good or bad, but as a participant in family life—one that can both connect and divide, depending on how and when it’s used.

For MRI, this systemic and interactional approach is precisely what made Brinberg’s work compelling. Rather than isolating “problem behaviors,” it looks at the patterns that shape relationships—how one person’s effort to protect can feel to another like control, how a moment meant for rest can become another site of interruption.

And importantly, it reminds us that data about devices are also stories about love. Each notification, each check-in, each sigh of exasperation when a parent looks at a screen mid-sentence—these are micro-moments of relationship in motion.

The PATTER team plans to continue this work, exploring when technology fosters warmth and when it risks harm. They hope to share their results in both scholarly journals and public forums like The Conversation, ensuring that their findings return to the very families whose lives they study.

This MRI-supported research invites us to look more closely at the everyday ways technology threads through family life—not as a distraction from relationships, but as a mirror reflecting them. For now, the message is a gentle one: connection is not the same as contact, and privacy is not the same as distance. When families pause to listen—not just through their devices, but through their presence—they reclaim what the digital world too easily fragments: the feeling of being truly known.