Disconnect to reconnect with people
Are you like Jon? Jon was a divorced dad of a young daughter named Simone. He said, “Without my cellphone, I can’t work or read emails or write to the women in my life. I can’t write to Simone’s nanny. I can’t take pictures of my daughter. You can’t do anything.”
Jon’s story is told in the book “Reclaiming Conversation” by Sherry Turkle. Jon was a noncustodial parent frantic to find meaningful ways to interact with his elementary-aged daughter. He thought going on her school field trip might be a good way to connect. But Jon spent most of his time on his cellphone, taking pictures, posting, texting to friends. But not talking with his daughter. Jon finished his story like this:
“I took eight hundred pictures and I was sending out every picture, texting people who are responding to the pictures. I’m writing, writing, writing. And all of a sudden I’m realizing as I’m sitting there that Simone has been sitting there for, like, an hour without me saying a word to her. Finally, Simone said, ‘Put your phone down.’”
Ouch. The child tells the parent to put the phone down. Of course it works the other way, too. Parents often need to tell their kids to put the phone down. Both parents and children (and friends) need to learn how to have a conversation without a phone in their hand. But parents bear the main responsibility.
Turkle tells about a pediatrician named Jenny Radesky who noticed more parents and caregivers were using smartphones when they were with their children. Radesky did not believe this was healthy and did a study of adults watching over children as they ate meals together in fast food restaurants. “Across the board, the adults paid more attention to their phones than to their children. Some adults interacted intermittently but most withdrew completely into their devices. For their part, children became passive or detached or sought adult attention with bad behavior.”
Radesky concluded: “These are the times we get to listen to our kids and help them understand themselves and their experiences. This is how children learn to regulate strong emotions, how to read other people’s social cues, and how to have a conversation — all skills that are much harder to learn later on, say at age 10 or 15.”
Jim Priest is CEO of Sunbeam Family Services and can be reached at jpriest@ sunbeamfamilyservices.org.