How my FAMILY UNPLUGGED & RECONNECTED
It’s easy to waste hours on our screens – and surveys are increasingly showing that parents are as guilty as their children. Writer Meghan Gurdon explains what happened when the whole family switched off
Afew weeks ago, I sat beside my husband and our youngest daughter as she waited to play in a recital. Thirteen-year-old Flora was looking around the room with her hands in her lap. Hugo got out his phone and started playing a word game. I picked up my phone and opened Twitter. Parents and families were still coming in and getting settled. We had time.
Then some niggle made me look up from my screen and, in an instant, I saw the scene as if from above. There sat our daughter, nervous and alone, totally ignored by the two people on earth who love her the most. Without thinking about it, her father and I had chosen idle play on our screens rather than engage with a precious girl who will be grown and gone in a matter of years.
I suddenly felt queasy. How long had we been preoccupied, anyway? How often was this happening?
I nudged my husband and we put our phones away. But the incident lodged itself in my conscience, a place that turns out to be full of awful moments. There was the time last winter when I missed her older sister’s crucial swimming race because I was on my phone and lost track of the order of competition. After, Phoebe, 17, said: ‘I kept checking when I was getting ready to swim, but you never looked up.’
That would be the same daughter who, with her four siblings (the three eldest are at university), gets hounded to get off her phone, tablet, laptop. I chide, I chivvy, and I’ve even taken covert photographs to show them the slack faces and bad posture when they’re on their machines… There is a word for people like me: hypocrite.
My children have taken snapshots of their own, capturing me in the very pose I deplore: hunched, dead-eyed and scrolling.
On Sunday, Phoebe joined us in a riotous hour of family cards by the fire. Although still feeling the technology tug, we had somehow been returned to our own lives
Like many parents, I talk a good game but struggle with keeping screen time at a reasonable level. I know that I set an imperfect example. My reliance on my phone, in particular, affects my ability to pay attention and be ‘in the moment’, even when I’m nowhere near it. It’s as if the thing is fitted with a homing device that sends out pings only I can hear. It’s calling to me now.
The day after the recital, I apologised to Flora and asked if she’d noticed us being distracted. ‘I did but I didn’t mind much,’ she said. ‘The thing I don’t like is when I’m talking to you and Daddy and when I ask you a question you respond five minutes later because you’re on your computer.’
Ouch! Yes. It happens all the time. And not just with us. Modern families are in the throes of what has been called ‘the big disconnect’, as we disengage from each other to spend more time with our devices. Children aged eight to 18 are spending on average seven hours a day on screens. The typical British adult spends upwards of six hours plugged in each weekday (bets are off on weekends). All this time surfing is not making us happier, or smarter. A recent study of 4,500 children aged eight to 11 found that those who spent more than two hours a day looking at screens had poorer memory, worse language skills and shorter attention spans.
TURN OFF AND SWITCH ON
For my new book, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power Of Reading Aloud In The Age Of Distraction, we did a lot of reading out loud at our house. I know that it works as a brilliant antidote to the familyscattering effects of technology. What we hadn’t tried, though, was chucking out the screens altogether. Feeling guilty, I proposed a digital detox. For 48 hours, we’d put our machines away and rediscover what family life was like without them. The responses to my idea were… interesting.
My husband frowned. ‘But what about work? I have to be able to check things during the weekend.’
‘Oh sure, but, you know, just once or twice a day. Otherwise, no games, no Facebook, no nothing.’ ‘Okay,’ he said. Phoebe and Flora had stronger reactions. ‘I’M NOT DOING THAT!’ Phoebe said. Flora’s eyes welled up. ‘Two whole days?’ I persuaded them that it could be fun, and when Friday evening came, there was surprisingly little drama. We all handed in our phones and laptops and I stowed them away. Phoebe went to bed early (‘There’s no point staying up,’ she joked), but when I went to see Flora, she was reading Harry
Potter. ‘It feels like I haven’t read a book in ages,’ she told me. She was right about that.
The next morning, we woke up to a house that felt strangely calm. There was no phone beside my bed, so I didn’t check the time. I didn’t check email. I didn’t play any word games. I lay there for a moment, thinking, ‘This is weird. This is nice.’ There was a knock at the door. It was Flora.
‘Come in, darling,’ Hugo said. He and I sat up where we were, and Flora tucked herself in at the bottom of the bed, facing us. Soon, we were all chatting away. Now and then, I heard the distant ping of my phone, which was followed each time by a little rush of happiness that it wasn’t in the room. Once upon a time, we’d started lots of weekend mornings this cosy way, but this hadn’t happened since Flora received an ipad as a gift, many months ago.
IT’S FAMILY TIME
That was the first of many small epiphanies. We were startled to find just how much more often we interacted with each other without our devices than when we had them. On Sunday morning, Phoebe slept in, so it was late morning when I
tapped on her door to ask if she wanted to join us for a family game of cards.
Without a screen to keep her in her room, she joined us in a riotous hour by the fire. It felt as though we had been returned to our own lives. And yet, we still felt a pull.
‘I like how this got me out of my room to spend time with the family,’ Phoebe said. ‘But I do miss technology and I keep feeling the urge to check my phone.’
Hugo laughed, ‘Once or twice, I’ve actually patted my pocket.’
BACK TO THE FUTURE
It was something we all noticed – and for good reason. Our detox laid bare how many functions our phones perform for us: they’re our alarm clocks, banks, libraries, encyclopedias, calendars, cameras, games, calculators, pedometers, newspapers, televisions, notebooks – as well as our chief means of communicating by voice, text or email with everyone. Going without meant constantly bumping into tasks we couldn’t get done, questions we couldn’t answer.
Before I restored the devices to their
owners, I had to know. Had they enjoyed the respite? Should we do it again? ‘It was fine,’ said Hugo. ‘It was really nice,’ said Phoebe and Flora. Then the girls exchanged an apologetic smile. They had liked what had happened during the break. At the same time, they were glad to have their screens back.
Well, Hugo and I were, too. But we were also determined that the experience not leave our family unchanged. Two days off may sound small, but it reminded us of the pre-internet past, and how the future can be if we go without sometimes. Will it be one weekend a month, everyone’s phone in the basket after 9pm? Negotiations have begun…
We all handed in our phones and laptops and I stowed them away