• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, January 11, 2016

Sure to inspire a million child development research proposals, new data shows that young parents have become virtually glued to their mobile gadgets.

In particular, parents now spend 1.3 times more of their day on Facebook mobile than non-parents, according to a new Facebook study that analyzed internal data after partnering with Ipsos Media to survey 1,000 US participants.

Stateside, new moms spend one and a half times more of their day on Facebook mobile than non-moms.

And, as you might expect, parenthood is inspiring people to connect at some pretty odd hours. Indeed, new parents may start their first mobile session as early as 4 a.m., while a full 56% of new parents are recording their first Facebook mobile sessions by 7 a.m.

“Mobile has become a lifeline for parents, now over-indexing on mobile usage across the globe,” a Facebook spokeswoman told me on Monday.

What are parents doing on their devices?

As we all know, sharing, sharing, and more sharing. Yes, new moms post two and a half times more status updates, three and a half times more photos, and 4.2 times more videos than non-moms, according to Facebook's internal data analysis.

And, whether people genuinely want to or not, they do engage more with the stuff parents are sharing than other types of shared content. On Facebook, new parents’ posts about their babies get 37% more interactions from relatives, and 47% more interactions from friends than do parents' general posts.

As for other uses, 53% of parents with young kids say they use mobile to keep their child entertained, while 67% of parents with teens say they use it to stay connected to their children.

Moreover, Millennial moms are clearly distinguishing themselves by their willingness to research and buy products for their families. A full 53% of these young moms say that mobile devices help them be better consumers when making purchases, compared to 42% of Gen X moms and 29% of Boomer moms.