Child’s heartbreaking school assignment goes viral, reveals what kids think of parents’ cellphones

A Louisiana second-grader's school assignment touched the hearts of hundreds of thousands after the child's teacher shared a copy of the assignment on Facebook.

The assignment? A personal essay on the most regretted invention of modern time.

The target for some of the students? Cellphones — because according to the young student (and several other children in the class), parents spend far too much time on their devices.

Louisiana elementary teacher Jen Beason shared a copy of the assignment on her Facebook page, and prior to making the post's settings private, the post received more than 261,000 shares, according to USA Today.

"I don't like the phone because my [parents] are on their phone every day. A phone is sometimes a really bad [habit]. I hate my mom's phone and I wish she never had one," the student wrote in the writing prompt.

The student's paper had a cellphone drawn on it with an "x" across it. According to the paper, the assignment was due on May 16.

You can see a screenshot of the child's assignment here.

Beason said that four out of 21 students shared the same anti-cellphone sentiment and used hashtags #getoffyourphone and #listentoyourkids.

According to the Daily Mail, Beason shared the photo and update last Friday.

A 2017 survey found that about half of the parents surveyed reported that using various forms of technology interrupted parent-child interactions at least three times a day.

According to Medical News Today, the study found that "even low — or what is considered 'normal' — levels of technoference correlated with a higher level of child behavior issues such as oversensitivity, irritability, hyperactivity, and whining."

Dr. Jenny Radesky, one of the study's co-authors, said, "We can't assume a direct connection between parents' technology use and child behavior, but these findings help us better understand the relationship."

"We know that parents' responsiveness to their kids changes when they are using mobile technology and that their device use may be associated with less-than-ideal interactions with their children," Radesky added.

"It's really difficult to toggle attention between all of the important and attention-grabbing information contained in these devices, with social and emotional information from our children, and process them both effectively at the same time," she concluded.