Behavioral scientists and child psychologist have been raising red flags for years about the amount of time spent by children on tablets, smart phones and game devises. It’s a legitimate concern given that family time, conversation, reading and just laying in the grass watching clouds turn into faces, is slowly getting squeezed out of existence.
My wife and I are raising our grandchildren so I often find myself at playgrounds or basketball camps with a lot of thirty-something parents. And one thing is becoming painfully apparent -- parents spend even more time on these devices than do their kids. In fact I would venture to say that screen time is beginning to outweigh facetime... or at least real face to face facetime.
I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen a child run from the playground equipment to their mom to ask, “Mom, did you see me do the monkey bars?” only to have the parent respond with, “That was great, honey” while never looking up from the phone in her hand. Or watched as a boy dribbles through two defenders and makes a layup, then looks proudly over to his dad on the sidelines only to find his dad missed the moment because he was having a Twitter moment.
I raised my own kids a generation ago, before the distractions of Facebook and Gmail became a daily habit. So I feel at ease not having to check my phone constantly. I will confess however, to having taken a magazine or book to the interminably long swim meets my daughter competed in before there were cell phones, just to stave off the boredom of having to wait 30 minutes between races. And I’m sure many of you have sat through endless soccer games where no one scores and your face is numb from yelling into the wind or have driven hundreds of miles to dance competitions and stayed up most of the night with giddy pre-teens. That’s just a normal right of passage for most parents.
But something else is at play here that maybe only a Boomer such as myself, trying to function in a social media dominated world, can begin to articulate – we’re losing the ability to engage. And we’re losing it because the distractions are endless. The boredom of sitting through dance competitions and soccer games is certainly eased by checking the status of Facebook and emails. But when parents can’t or won't engage with their kids for long periods of time because of preoccupations they deem more pressing, the kids get the message that they are not important.
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