This is hard. Children can be incredibly boring. I love my kids immensely and they are definitely fascinating at times. But there are games they want to play that literally put me to sleep. Or sometimes my daughter will take 15 minutes to brush her teeth. Should I just stare day after day, week after week? It's BORING. Right now my kid is taking the longest dump and I'm waiting outside of the bathroom. What should I be doing?
I think the key is what happens when they're ready for interaction. When she's done brushing or using the bathroom, do you put the phone down right away, or finish reading/playing? Similarly, if you're focusing on something else instead of playing the (boring) game, your kid will know it. Kids are very good at recognizing when mom and dad aren't paying attention. They'll learn your "attention hierarchy". Do it enough and they'll learn that phone > my game/idea/talk. Definitely a balancing act.
We've found it useful to just be honest with them. "Dad needs 5 or 10 minutes of Dad time, then we'll play."
Agreed. No one should be expected to just sit and watch each of those long dumps splash into the toilet bowel however when I take my kids to the park playground and play with them there I see many parents never supervising and just staring into their phones even when the kid is calling out to them. Like most things the right balance is needed.
It easy to judge when you don’t know what else is going on in people’s lives... some parents are the sole carers of their kids and spend 16 hours a day looking after them. The park may be the only time in the day they get some downtime when the kids are occupied running around
Yes totally. I go on my phone too sometimes when they play but try to make it a point to look up and check periodically to ensure either they're not in trouble or irritating someone else. The problem is these things can happen in an instance. They are definitely exhausting and getting the balance right is hard. I was talking more about someone who's disappeared for a half hour sitting faraway or there is a kid going crazy (had one attacking others with a stick) and none of us even know where/who the parent is. That sounds more like the sort of thing the article is talking about, if your kid is wishing the phone wasn't invented you're probably on it too long.
I think this is the right answer. You need to steal some you time while you can but still be attentive when you need to be. I imagine the kid that wrote the letter in the article is used to being wholeheartedly ignored while Mum checks Facebook. If you go to cafes you can watch this phenomenon unfold right in front of you: inattentive parents on their phones whilst their kids vie unsuccessfully for a little bit of connection with their favourite people in the world.
Young children from 3 to 5 years old are awesome. You can spend hours playing with some sticky tape and a sheet of paper. make a sticky loop with the sticky on the outside, and use it in between to stick things together. Make a Möbius strip and ask them to draw a line along it. Make a three colour hexaflexagon[1]. Make paper dice with different numbers of sides, drawing them out flat with tabs and cutting them out and sticking them together.
The first 3 to 5 years are critical in several stages of a child's mental development[2]. Too many adults think kids are a waste of time until they are older, but that couldn't be further from the truth. The more time you spend with them and the more of a positive relationship you develop, the more it will pay off in spades later on. They seek attention because they love you and they desperately want to spend time with you. 4 year olds want to get involved and help with everything - let them, even if it means the job takes twice as long. You will never have as much influence over the development of your child again.
Yes, but have you ever looked after a 3 year old for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s hard work, and I doubt most people can maintain absolute focus on their kids all the time for that length of time...
I split the work 50/50 with my wife for the most part. We both had work shifts, so arranged things so when one was working the other looked after the girls. It was hard on our relationship, but worked out for the best.
It's incredibly hard work, and draining because they are potentially in danger almost all the time. We were lucky enough to have two girls 15 months apart, which is more work sometimes, and less others because they played a lot together. However some of my fondest memories of spending time with my daughters is from that time.
That sounds tough, happy to hear you made it through.
I’ve seen quite a few families where one parent doesn’t do any childcare... that looks super tough, which is why I can forgive those parents sometimes zoning out and playing with their phone...
Yes, you need breaks, that means that even if you're a stay-at-home parent it's important to send your baby/kid to daycare a couple of days a week.
It's good for you so you can have a life other than just being a parent, and it's good for your kid because he/she can learn to socialize early and interact with someone else than you.
But I understand it's not always easy to find affordable daycare depending where you live.
> You've reinforced my decision not to have kids, far too much responsibility.
Absolutely. I agree with you and I think more people should choose to not have children. There is still a stigma about it. I think the stigma would go away or at least subside if more people opted to not have children.
Get bored. It's OK to be bored from time to time. Your brain needs to get bored. Being able to get bored is becoming an increasingly rare skill. I'd speculate that cognitive abilities improve after periods of boredom.
Boredom is a source of creativity, or so I remember after an article I read. In all honesty, I have experienced it and some of my most profound(?) ideas came while I was bored.
Yes, but it's also true (or even more true) for children. So it's OK for a kid to get bored while their parents are busy with something, be it their phone or anything more valuable.
I don't know whether it's okay or not. A teenager is more likely to be able to spend that downtime on something useful. Children, not as much. Whilst, I understand - more than most people - that we need alone time, I think that parents spend a lot more time on their phone, be it facebook, reddit, twitter, instagram etc, than they would like to admit.
I am sure they could sneak - if they already don't - some time on social media while the kids are playing on their own. For a kid, time with their parents is integral for growing up and having a healthy relationship with them. Most kids however don't get to experience it.
Additionally, time spend on facebook and social media has correlation with depression and stress. I don't think this is the best environment for a kid to be brought up.
Half a dozen replies are saying the same thing as you. Are you all taking your own advice? Do you spend time being bored without picking up your phone or getting on a PC?
I can't cite any research on boredom. But after reading some articles I realized that continuous consumption of entertaining information makes me tired and agitated. So I restricted social media and internet news only to desktop and left only messaging apps on my phone, letting myself get bored while commuting or waiting for something. While subjective and anecdotal, I can confirm that occasional boredom is good for my emotional state and intellectual performance. I kind of even enjoy the periods of boredom I have now.
I dunno. How about be bored and let your brain freewheel for a minute? I get it, the dopamine comes so fast and easy - all you have to do is check Twitter or Reddit or HN.
Sure, at this point it's just Luddite speculation, but I kinda expect that we're going to find out in 15 years that not having prolonged periods of free thought (i.e. being bored) is worse for our mental health than sleep deprivation.
Depends on the child. But I find there’s ample “bored” time when both hands are occupied carry kids around for hours to help them sleep... you grab the phone sometimes to relax when you can but it’s not like their isn’t a lot of bored time too.
Yes, I think we all recognize the dangers but this is absolutely true.
I think when used correctly they can be amazingly helpful however. Looking after young kids is all about the long game. Caring for kids for up to 16 hours a day can be soul destroying, and playing with your phone when they’re occupied gives you a window into a wider world...
The alternative is spending a bunch of time staring into the distance feeling your brain slowly atrophy.
> Right now my kid is taking the longest dump and I'm waiting outside of the bathroom. What should I be doing?
Oh man I can sympathize with this one. I do the exact same thing -- pull up reddit or HN to bide the time while she contemplates the meaning of life on the can.
omg... this. I just spent 4 days at Disney. My 3 year old picked the most opportune times to need a poo. Like when we got to the front of a queue (after queuing for 4 minutes) and were just about to board he suddenly had the urgent need to go, or when we were sitting down for a meal.
And he's a SLOW pooper. He sits there for like 15 minutes and after a few splashes I'm like "are you done?" and he says no, nothing happening for five minutes so I ask again, nope still not done, five minutes later and still nothing at which point I'm like "right kid, it's time to shit or get off the pot already". In the meantime, I'm standing in a cramped cubicle waiting for him to finish so I can wipe his arse and make sure his hands are clean. FML.
Hahaha, so recognizable :) I'm always searching for stuff the kids like that I also like, it keeps me from yawning and from getting distracted. There are few things but we both like, consequently it often happens that we start out doing stuff together but someone gets very bored. Sure he also tries to make something whenever I make something out of wood but he is bored after 5 min and starts to do something else.
Getting on your phone while playing is worse than saying, I'm very bored what can we do that we both like? For me it can also be, just hop on the train and walk in a different city to have a sandwich. He also likes that. It takes some time but I learned that we both like simple things, like a walk in nature and searching for stones for example. I might take my camera to make some nice pictures. Lego is another nice thing. He makes simple things, I make steering systems or other fancy stuff with cogs.
This is so very true. Lots of waiting in parenting, and lots of repetition that gets boring. Reading some interesting stuff on the phone on the side helps. Just be ready to drop that when attention is needed, which can sometimes be hard if you're in the middle of writing a message for example.
Because my 4 year old son needs help wiping his ass. He’s 4, 4 year olds need help brushing teeth and wiping ass. Maybe your kids are perfect behaving prodigies who never needed help. My kid needs help.
Because as soon as you start doing something else, they are magically instantly done with whatever they're doing. They are attention grabbers that make 40 yo Twitter wine moms look like amateurs.
a) we should be bored more. Let's get that out of the way.
b) When you are bored, you might choose interacting with your kid through the bathroom door. Not the funniest activity but better than just waiting. Now you aren't interacting with your kid because reading HN is funnier.
c) When your kid is done pooping you'll be absent, looking into your phone saying "1 sec" instead of immediately making contact.
I know all of this because I'm as guilty myself. I have no excuses.
I think this is the key. Kids need immediate attention (and should have it), and parents shouldn't be afraid of being bored with their kids.
Actually my parents and in-laws are always saying they never spend so much time "playing", "playing is for kids, they can do it by themselves or with other kids", they always say. They may have a point that interaction with a bored parent may just kill their creativity whereas finding something to do by yourself may be a useful skill to learn. So what did they do? No idea, dad was a work and reading the paper at home while mom did stuff around the house I guess.
Perhaps we are just imitating commercials of happy families running in fields of flowers.
It also gets easier, my son is getting quite into mountain biking, can't wait until he fits a proper one with gears and proper brakes. Finding that stuff that you and your kid really both enjoy is pure gold.
Given how much freedom I had as a kid (a lot, my earliest memories include me running around outside unsupervised), I think that kids can and should play by themselves or with other kids as much as possible. As long as there is a safe environment, I don’t think kids should need constant supervision.
Well, why were you on one when you commented here?
Sometimes screens are a great distraction. Sometimes they're not. The latter fact doesn't take away from the former - it's just on the user to make good judgements. There doesn't have to be something so fascinating on the screen to justify usage. Maybe it's news, maybe it's an ebook. Maybe it's HN. It's fine if the phone goes away when the kid's done taking a dump.
Doing nothing is exactly how a lot of that knowledge was discovered. Just look up biographies of famous scientists, they usually have lots and lots of leisure time, walks around the country side doing nothing and other such ''wastes'' of time.
My dad drank and watched TV. His dad drank and was too tired to do anything because he was a laborer. Going further back, my family were poor serfs. Shall I find a duke to toil under?
Exactly. Current type of smartphones (they're not first ones) were invented about 11 years ago, and people got so incredibly addicted and dependent on them it's incredible... It's as if smartphones are literally (and I do mean literally) a vitally important part of life.
With such attitude you should have never had kids in the first place. But, it's too late for you. At least I'm smart enough to realize I shouldn't make that mistake.
Encourage your child to engage in shared interests, and to brush teeth without dawdling? How old are your children, and exactly who do you think is going to raise them into productive and useful members of society?
Three kids 5 and under. You get back what you put into them. If what you put into them is surfing your phone while they brush their teeth for 15 minutes, I feel bad for future them and future you.
Harsh I know, but sometimes that is what it takes to change a mindset. Other people have more constructive and specific ideas. I sincerely hope you think about them.
I have 0, 3 and 5 year olds. The three year old can spend at least five minutes between each spoonful of breakfast, just staring into space. She insists on using a small spoon so these things combine to create epic breakfasts too...
I wish the BBC stopped downgrading their coverage to the level of the mirror+daily wail websites, and create articles by cut&pasting other bits of 'social media' to make 'content'.
As a non-native english speaker, for many years I looked up to the BBC to give me nice, literate -- often bland -- coverage, with excellent use of the language, vocabulary and no notion of dumbing down the language -- on the contrary.
The problem seems to be the parents, not the technology. It reminds me of a VSauce episode that brought up the following interesting antidotes:
> In 1871, the Sunday Magazine published a line that may as well have been written today about texting. "Now we fire off a multitude of rapid and short notes, instead of sitting down to have a good talk over a real sheet of paper." And the Journal of Education in 1907 lamented that at a modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual has his head buried in his favorite magazine. [1,2]
If the parents weren't lost in their phones, they'd be lost in something else.
I am not making the argument that the behavior is ok. I'm showing that people in the past have complained about similar behaviors and stating that blaming the technology is probably not the right idea.
You are done with a magazine at some point. The same can't be said about the internet.
There will always be new articles or replies somewhere, the time you can spend reading them is endless as opposed to a printed magazine where you will have read all articles that interest you eventually.
Depending on the magazine there was another issue to bury your head in arriving in a week to a month. Also there was more than one magazine around. Finish one and pick up the next.
It's a mix I'd say but technology certainly plays its part.
I used to think that I'm the problem but it has been brought up in online studies and people I know more and more.
Social networks make me miserable. I didn't have Facebook or Instagram for almost 8 years and I started using Instagram recently. It's a strange mix of feelings but I loathe and look forward to opening the app every time.
Most people seem to experience something similar, no matter how hard they try they can't stop comparing themselves to others, hunting likes and other fake internet points.
That's true, but one interesting takeaway from this article I noticed is that it's the younger generation criticizing the older one - usually it's the other way around.
"That is so sad and convicting. Great reminder for us all to put those phones down and engage with our kids more."
I imagine a mother posting that comment on her phone, with a couple young children looking at her sadly in the background. She feels good about the change she decided to make in her life, after checking facebook just one last time.
Technology, especially the widespread technologies like smartphones are something that just happened upon most people.
So most people haven't adapted on how to use them responsibly. Just look around the average cafe, you can usually find a group of people sitting together but not talking about anything, they just look at their phones.
This also seems to reveal an underlying issue, one which I also experienced. Before smartphones usually, you'd make up conversation, smalltalk, even if you didn't want to talk or had anything interesting to say. These days instead of doing that people just seem to ignore each other and do something that is interesting, using their phones.
> Before smartphones usually, you'd make up conversation, smalltalk, even if you didn't want to talk or had anything interesting to say. These days instead of doing that people just seem to ignore each other and do something that is interesting, using their phones.
That is precisely the root of the problem. That means that the interpersonal relationships with friends and family have been hijacked by for-profit organizations pushing "more interesting" content. This contributes to dividing society even more.
That isn't new - just look at old photographs of commuter trains packed to the brim with everyone burying their face in a newspaper. Even the for profit part isn't new. At this point a lack of people for smalltalk is as much of a societal problem as the inability to find a badminton partner in say Eugene, Iowa. It is the norm and it is time to accept that people don't like talking with random strangers about nothing of consequence out of boredom.
Similarly parents not being attentive enough to their children is also sadly not new. (Satisfaction is also likely elusive for kids given the sheer craving they have proving incompatible with maintaining a house and necessary income.)
Although I wonder about the psychological impact of that being combined with helicopter parents going full surveillance state as the discourse shifts from "Tracking bands on your kid? That sounds stupid and horrifying." to being seriously considered and accepted. Like asking for a very locked down "can call only them with GPS" wrisrtwatch-phone." Society pendulums too much for linear social progressions and I hope it does so before we reach "You don't have trackers on your kid what the hell is wrong with you!" norms.
It must be frustrating being constantly watched yet never being able to receive attention when desired.
How are you forced into a conversation with a group of people you chose to go somewhere with? If you didn't want to talk with them, don't accept their invitation to get coffee
It is very rare that you really have to talk to someone, IME. Usually, it's more of a..."I don't really like or have a lot of common with this person but I've known them forever so what the heck"
> Before smartphones usually, you'd make up conversation, smalltalk, even if you didn't want to talk or had anything interesting to say.
No you didn't. You read a newspaper or magazine. Even growing up in the 80s I remember sitting around the table, each of us reading a different section of the LA times, and then swapping 1/2 way through the meal.
That kind of thing was not nearly as widespread as phone usage today; not by a very long shot. Maybe you did that, but I would say that was probably very rare. The use of phones is nearly ubiquitous, because they have addictive properties that paper simply doesn’t.
I was definitely addicted to my phone right around the last election cycle. Podcasts, reddit politics threads, other social media, websites, you name it.
Luckily, its an easy habit to kick. I use timers and a tracking app on my phone to monitor pickups and screen time spent. I try to hit 12 hours between opening any social media apps, 6 hours between opening any news apps etc.
I've managed to get it down to under an hour a day.
I'm interested to try it. I did for a bit. I found it showed me "this is how much you used your phone too much in the past", but it couldn't influence my present or future behaviour directly.
Hardly anyone has mentioned that there are plenty of families that do, or did, the same thing with the television. Endless vaguely engaging wallpaper.
One of the subplots of Fahrenheit 451 (published 1953) is that houses would get wraparound screens with a virtual Family on them that people would engage with more than the real family.
We have a rule of no phones at the table. Unless it is for a purpose - while in the middle of conversation if there is a question we can't answer we will check the phone. ("what does a giraffe sound like?" "what does the gallbladder do?")
Otherwise, yes I will use my phone while the children are in the park in the sandpit or playing around. If I was helicoptering over them all the time, they wouldn't explore the climbing frames alone - and i do keep an eye in case they fall but want them to have the confidence to do it alone
and they see how the phone can be useful - want an expensive toy in the shop? let's check the phone and see if we can find it cheaper...
- are we lost? let's learn to use a map...
- how do you say x or y in a foreign language?
I solved this problem by giving my two year old my old phone. She doesn't complain and I get to use my phone in peace. She calls me out when I'm trying to use the phone and she wants attention.
And in case anyone is wondering, her vocabulary soared after we started letting her use the phone, and most people comment on how advanced her language skills are, so anecdotally the phone seems to be helping her not hurting her, despite all the objections we get when they see my toddler using a phone.
So far I haven't found one, nor have I seen any of the downsides that other parents talk about. Maybe it's because we enforce technology breaks on her every once in a while -- when she is poorly behaved she doesn't get electronics the next day or two as a consequence. And sometimes we just keep her otherwise occupied and she doesn't even ask.
But I guess we'll see. Every kid is different, so YMMV.
Our son gets occasional use of a mobile device. At 2-3, it was educational games on a phone (or Octonauts if we needed to distract him at a restaurant). Then he went months without even asking about it.
He's now 5 and uses an iPad now and then, solely to play Scrabble against the computer. His vocab is very good: he can usually beat the computer and has had 400+ point games. The other month, I noticed him playing against himself rather than the computer. He said it was because it meant he got twice as many turns!
So your child will accelerate through language development thanks to this device. At some point, they will discover the endless rabbit holes including, but not limited to, pornography, technology, philosophy, gaming, and politics. Their comprehension in all these areas will see similar advances.
But then what? What will happen when they need to spend time with themselves? How will they relate to other people? What happens when novel information is no longer novel? Will drugs help? How will they cope with the stresses of life?
This is a slippery slope. We are only now seeing how total the consequences to what it means to be a social people.
Given normal circumstance(no mental illness etc), kids get bored by those devices too, as with information and learning. They adapt and learn how to use the tools to meet their will.
I think the magic ingrediences here is love, hugs, attention (when they seek it) and time is what truly matters. That will guide down the slippery slope they will take regardless. If the kids want to play, learn from it and can let it go without having problem with it, it should ok.
Anyway it's something they need to learn since most things in life will be tied to electronic devices.
Little kids have been bookworms since the invention of books. Somehow access to libraries didn't turn people into en-masse drug abusers, unless coffee counts.
Yesterday I was leaving a grocery store at the same time as another customer who had 3 kids with her. I got into my car and noticed the family getting into the car next to mine.. being a polite guy I kinda waited a bit for them to pack in to the car and also to wait for them to drive off. After about 3 minutes I was still waiting but being polite wasn't watching closely. Finally I had to see why they were taking so much time. The 3 kids were just sitting in the back seat quietly and the mother was just messing around on her phone. soo this is a thing.
Definitely messing around on her phone? I've got into the car with my kids and spent time using my phone to get directions to something, send messages to organise things, respond to emails, etc. My partner works in social media so is paid to review, post and respond on Instagram/Facebook/etc, including out of hours.
The question was "what invention do you wish had never been created?"
This is not a very nice question for second grade - something is generally described as an invention if it solves a problem, so second graders are unlikely to have a realistic sense of how inventions could be bad.
The phone is the most visible "invention" to second graders and I find it more surprising that only 4 out of 21 said it - any reasonable answer to the question is likely to viral around the classroom.
A smartphone isn't an activity; it's a virtual place where activities happen. Kids (and, apparently, opinion-piece writers) don't usually understand this.
"My mom is on her phone too much!" could actually mean any/all of:
• my mom is a workaholic
• my mom is always chatting with her friends she had to move away from to give me a better place to live
• my mom is flirting on Tinder with my stepfather-to-be
• my mom is tired from work and zones out watching Youtube videos
• my mom is "addicted" to knowing what celebrities are up to so she has water-cooler conversation to share
• my mom is in a self-perpetuating fear spiral, feeding herself every horrible news story she can find even though she hates the feeling of reading them, and should probably see a therapist
• my mom is addicted to showing off on Facebook
• my mom likes reading books
Every one of these activities existed before smartphones; they just occurred in different places/formats.
You'd buy tabloids for the celebrity news; you'd watch the nightly news on cable; you'd flirt in bars; you'd travel to visit friends, or have long, nightly telephone calls with them; and you'd keep up with the real Joneses next-door instead of keeping up with the virtual Joneses on Facebook. And you'd be a workaholic by always being at the office, rather than by being home but inattentive.
There are many times when a parent should be giving their attention to their child, but they aren't because their attention is on their phone. The specific activity they're doing on their phone doesn't matter.
Before, you could still do these activities instead of focusing on your child, but the way that manifested itself was completely different.
A parent going to the bar after work is different than a parent being at home but ignoring their child because they would rather look at their phone. In the first case, there is a clear line between when the parent is at home and when the parent is at the bar. And, it is fairly obvious if the parent is spending too much time at the bar and not enough time at home.
In the smartphone situation, the parent can now be on their phone literally 100% of the time they're at home. The child has no idea if their parent is ready to focus on them, or is going to be distracted by the phone. And, it's not obvious at all if the parent is spending too much time on the phone.
Therefore, from the perspective of the child, replacing the old activities with a smartphone activity is much much worse.
I don't see how the focus on "the way that manifested itself" is at all relevant.
My point is: bad parenting is bad parenting. As far as I know, smartphones haven't created bad parenting, or other social ills. They've just made it less legible, because now both the healthy activities and the unhealthy ones just look like "using your phone" to external observers.
If the point is to figure out whether someone is a good parent, measuring "time spent on smartphone" will give completely useless answers, and so judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at what they're actually doing (the activity.)
Fun fact: some parents do much of their communication with their children through their phone. Non-deaf parents of deaf children will often text more than they sign.
Play groups explicitly ban phones because otherwise some parents are always on their phones. This was not possible before smart phones.
Being at a play group is mutually exclusive with actively doing work as a workaholic. With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your child. Its a new issue. I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their children. Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7 and children are picking up on it.
> With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your child. Its a new issue.
Having observed quite a number and variety of parents in proximity with their children over the years, I can quite confidently state that being a bad (in the sense of neglectful) parent in proximity to a child does not require a smartphone and is not a new issue.
And obviously being an even worse (abusive) parent in close proximity to a child really doesn't require a smartphone, and is equally not a new issue.
> I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their children.
No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed.
> Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7
They always could, and those “best” at being bad parents often were.
> No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed.
This is my main point. It has changed. If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally neglectful. If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful.
> If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally neglectful.
True.
> If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful.
False. It may be harder for authorities to get the first lead which triggers an investigation which identifies criminal neglect in that case, but it is still criminal neglect. With or without the phone, which is immaterial; you can stay home and drink liquor all day while neglecting your child. Or stay home running an in-house brothel. Or stay home reading a book with the kid shut up in another room. Or, well, lots of things that don't need a smartphone, many of which are depressingly well attested in the records of actual child neglect cases.
There have been high profile cases of people who stayed home with their children and severely neglected them being identified, investigated, prosecuted, and punished...since before smartphones were a thing. And, even in the ones after smartphones, I've never seen smartphone use identified as a significant factor.
I'm not sure what play groups have to do with phones. Perhaps I misunderstand the purpose, I thought the play group was to get children together for their own entertainment.
And it's perfectly possible to be near your child with your nose buried in a book or a magazine.
I think he means play groups for infants and toddlers younger than elementary school age - before they have the ability to develop friendships on their own in school and so forth.
> Play groups explicitly ban phones because otherwise some parents are always on their phones. This was not possible before smart phones.
Yes, it was. The parent could be chatting to other parents and ignoring their child, the parent could be reading a book or magazine and ignoring their child.
The phone has just made it less explicitly signalled. If you want to read a book at a place you have to bring it to that place, you have to consciously select out a book and carry it with you; whereas your phone is light and you carry it everywhere, so it is easier to slip into that behaviour.
I think they have severely facilitated bad parenting. They've made it easy.
In the past, if a borderline bad parent was faced with hanging out at home with their child vs going out to the bar, they might very well have stayed home whereas the same parent would opt for the dating app. It's gotten much easier to make the bad choice.
Agreed. Also when this borderline parent IS paying attention to the kid, the phone can start dinging and buzzing at them to pull them away. The bar wouldn't have done that. Probably.
> judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at what they're actually doing (the activity.)
I do not agree with this. Just because you're doing some important work on your phone doesn't mean it's not bad parenting, if you should be interacting with your child instead.
I know you're arguing in good faith, but I think you're wrong and socialist_coder is right.
Maybe this is a different way to look at it: have you seen parents at the bus stop, say, playing on their phones and not paying attention to their kids? (I say "their" but this is almost every parent, some time or other.) That's new behavior that didn't exist before smartphones, because it couldn't. Maybe those people were just as bad at parenting 25 years ago, but their bad parenting wasn't enabled and encouraged nearly as much -- the technology just wasn't there.
I agree that "time spent on smartphone" is a very blunt metric -- any single easily-measurable number would be. But I also think it's a relatively good one. At least in the same ballpark as "time spent watching TV". Sure, what you watch on TV is relevant, but if you watch TV for 8 hours a day, that's very likely to be unhealthy.
My hypothesis here is that before smartphones, those parents literally weren't there. Smartphones (and other modern contrivances allowing for remote work and remote socialization) have turned households with one 10%-visible breadwinner and one 75%-visible homemaker into households with one 40%-visible breadwinner and one 95%-visible homemaker. Parents are at home more now. But that doesn't mean that they have any more time+energy available to give their kids than they always did.
Before smartphones, a working father might head after work to the bar, to avoid his own family until he's calmed down from how frustrated his boss makes him. After smartphones, the same father might instead head into his study with a bottle of whiskey and talk to his friends (who are also getting drunk in their own homes) on a group-chat, or over a game of Fortnite.
Before smartphones, a stay-at-home mother might have to run errands for a few hours: going to the bank, going to the grocery, going to attend a continuing-education class; and she would perhaps leave her child at home, or ask someone to babysit them, depending on the age. Now, instead, she's setting up some bill-payments and transfers in a banking app, then picking through a grocery-delivery app, and then watching an online lecture and participating in a forum as part of an online continuing-education program.
In both cases, the parents are now spending more time at home than they were before—but no more (or less) time paying attention to their kids than they were before.
If you measure the delta (time where you're near the kids but ignoring them), it looks like it's going up. But this is as misleading a statistic as the one that says seat-belts increase injuries: no, they don't, they just turn fatalities into injuries, and nobody was counting the injuries sustained during fatalities. Nobody was counting time spent outside the home as time spent ignoring your kids.
Nobody was counting time spent outside the home as time spent ignoring your kids.
Of course people were counting that!
I recall a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon where Calvin phones up his dad at work and asks him what he's doing. "Don't you think a game of Calvinball would be more fun?" (It would be, of course, so Calvin's dad heads home to play.) Or just think about the cliche of a politician retiring "to spend more time with his/her family."
Your examples sound great and noble but not really very realistic. Realistic is parents checking Facebook and Instagram at otherwise idle moments -- "idle" when they could be paying attention to their kids.
You are probably right that historically, many fathers were absent a lot of the time. That has definitely changed a lot but I don't think smartphones are the cause.
Even if everything you said is correct, there could still be a significant difference between "my dad isn't here a lot of the time" and "my dad ignores me a lot of the time" (smartphones greatly enabling the latter). Neither is great, but the latter in particular risks setting a dangerous example to kids when it comes to them learning how to socialize with others.
> have you seen parents at the bus stop, say, playing on their phones and not paying attention to their kids? (I say "their" but this is almost every parent, some time or other.) That's new behavior that didn't exist before smartphones, because it couldn't.
I saw plenty of people at bus stops or similar places with kids ignoring them long before smartphones. Sure, the use of a smartphone while doing so is new, but it doesn't fundamentally transform anything.
Phones may have amplified a pre-existing issue, but they are not the issue.
My parents were experts at being in the same room as me while abrogating my existence. My mother lived on the phone (you know, the kind you put to your face and go “oh I know... oh I know.... oh he didn’t!”), and my father had a newspaper for a face.
I inevitably one day had enough, and shredded the newspaper at the breakfast table, threw the phone into the garden. Oh, the hiding I got for that - but at least it was attention.
They sent me to boarding school shortly thereafter, which was a relief, for the reasons you describe.
My observation as someone that was a young child before smartphones, e-readers, the internet or even the Apple 1 is that parents didn't pay anymore attention to their kids then. They just had different distractions.
But that is just my anecdotal evidence just like the article is just anecdotal. Give me some real research showing parents are giving children less attention and to a degree that it is negatively impacting them and I'll care.
>You'd buy tabloids for the celebrity news; you'd watch the nightly news on cable; you'd flirt in bars; you'd travel to visit friends, or have long, nightly telephone calls with them; and you'd keep up with the real Joneses next-door instead of keeping up with the virtual Joneses on Facebook. And you'd be a workaholic by always being at the office, rather than by being home but inattentive.
all those have significant higher friction and time/effort required than smartphone based equivalent. Instant gratification is extremely important factor in the enforcement of addiction. It is like gambling addiction by playing weekly state lottery vs. playing slot machine or roulette in casino.
The difference is that before, you would've been called out as some species of asshole if you suddenly wandered out of, let's say a conversation, to go do one of those things. But for some reason people seem to think the phone endows them with the ability to do two things at once. Sure, the phone does its thing, but your own powers haven't increased even slightly. If people could see themselves from outside, they'd see just how good at multi-tasking they are. Namely they'd watch themselves doing a whole host of things absently and shittily... including but not limited to parenting. One thing at a time is plenty if you've a mind toward mastering that moment and living it.
PS I don't believe any of the people quoted saying "Wow really opens your eyes huh, a lesson for us all" are going to change one iota!
Now this is a salient point, I think. We train ourselves to whip out our phones when there's even a minute of "unusable" time. We use our phones while waiting in line, while on the bus, while on the toilet, etc. We condition ourselves that you respond to being a little bit bored by pulling out your phone.
And so, if you're a little bit bored while talking to someone? Oops, you've just pulled out your phone.
I do that. I catch myself doing it, though, and sheepishly put it away, pretending I was just checking the time. It requires a bit of self-awareness, though, and that decreases when people are tired and under stress. I would expect that people who would previously just be "zoning out" are now "phoning out."
(On the other hand, you know what seems to be a novel piece of social etiquette that I entirely approve of? People whipping out their phones while eating. Not while waiting for their food—while actually putting the food in their mouths. There's seemingly no longer a social norm about "not talking with your mouth full", so people try to carry on a conversation while also getting food stuffed into their food-holes, and neither one goes as well. Presenting yourself as slightly distracted [by, say, an "interesting" article on your phone] decreases the social pressure on everyone else to talk. It's a social-engineering "hack", that seems to be rapidly approaching an established convention.)
I appreciate the point you're making, but the truth is probably closer to "my mom likes some portion of the activities above, but is addicted to switching between them, getting notifications, and she doesn't known how to moderate her behavior."
As technologists, we have to acknowledge responsibility for the effects our inventions have on society. We wield an immensely powerful set of tools with a uniquely broad reach. We have a duty to build a better world, rather than just chasing engagement metrics.
We can only deal with that responsibility if we think deeply about the human instincts, urges and needs that our technology interacts with. We need to reflect on the strengths and vulnerabilities of the mammalian brain. We cannot be glib or facile, we cannot just say "put your phone down", we cannot just blame the users or a handful of huge multinationals. We need to ask ourselves honestly whether we are making salad or junk food, whether we are making medicine or cigarettes. We need to ask that question often - when we are planning an MVP, when we are adding a feature, when we are gamifying a metric. Is this function call exploitative? Does this for loop enrich the world?
You can do a study that proves that someone is "addicted to their phone" just like you can do a study that proves that someone is "addicted to using their car." That doesn't say much about why, so it's kind of a useless "fact."
Theoretically, you can be addicted to the process of using your phone, just like you can be addicted to driving, but I kind of doubt that that's what's driving the majority of what people refer to as "smartphone addiction."
More likely, they're addicted to specific activities that happen to exist on phones. Remove the phone, and they'd still be addicted to those activities; they'd just be doing them somehow else. Escapists gonna escape; socializers gonna socialize; etc.
Facebook or Instagram might be a superstimulus for pulling in a particular kind of competitive narcissists, but I have no doubt that such people would still be trying to show off how great their lives whether the apps were there or not. They just might not feel as much of a reward for doing so—because fewer people would be paying attention—so they might feel a sense of ennui (from this drive of theirs going unfulfilled), rather than a sense of dependence (from it going intermittently fulfilled.)
> Remove the phone, and they'd still be addicted to those activities; they'd just be doing them somehow else.
Not necessarily. A smartphone makes a lot of activities much lower-friction than they would be otherwise, and often much higher-reward. This is enough to drastically change a lot of people's behavior.
The phone has a transformational effect on those activities.
By modifying the pursuit of that activity in a number of ways, the activities become more addictive. It is more frictionless to begin them, reward is provided more instantly, and new ways to gamify the activity increase the dopamine response.
To say it is not the phone is true, in the sense that the phone on its own is not terribly addictive solely as a physical object. But the distinction is somewhat pointless when it has a large "addictiveness coefficient" to other activities.
A smartphone might well be a multiplier for addictive activities, but treating it as the object-of-hatred carries a risk of throwing the baby out with the bath-water.
Hate Facebook, if you like. Hate news services with apps. Hate the addictive ecosystems.
But hating the phone means biasing yourself even against phones with no addictive apps installed on them. It means fomenting a movement to get away from "smarts" in phones altogether, resulting in things like https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/1/17066494/li....
"Dumb smartphones" are a cute idea, but also a reactionary one; rather than just curating an apps marketplace to disallow these addictive activities, they entirely preclude this thing in your pocket from being a portable Turing machine, capable of achieving whatever functionalities you might want/need it to.
Consider an alternate world to our own, where we had had an established+successful smartphone-luddist movement for the last 5-10 years, most phones looked like the Light Phone, and you'd be breaking social norms to have a "full-fat" smartphone. Would these exist?
• ride-sharing apps
• WordLens (and its incarnation in Google Translate)
• password managers and TOTP 2FA (and mobile cryptocurrency wallets, if you like)
• podcasts
• maps with buildings and travel-times on them, and solid public-transit routing models
• competent voice-recognition (and thus the leaps-and-bounds-better accessibility for blind users we have today)
• the eBook ecosystem
• DSLR-quality phone cameras
• VoIP apps (and thus, the commoditization of cellular providers)
• streaming video-service mobile apps (and thus, demand for 4G cellular infrastructure)
All of these things are—at least in my opinion—unalloyed goods. None of them are addictive (or are addictive only to the background level of addiction we've already culturally come to terms with in entertainment products); they're just things that allow your smartphone to be the solution to a problem you've already set out to solve.
But, if we spin smartphones themselves as a cultural net-negative, I don't expect we'll see many more of these utility-type innovations.
> All of these things are—at least in my opinion—unalloyed goods.
Sure, many of these things are nice, but phrasing them as "unalloyed goods" I think it extremely one-sided and comes only from a techno-centric perspective. You don't have to be a Luddite to actually consider downsides of the things you mentioned and upsides of their alternatives.
• ride-sharing apps
Call a Taxi, ride a bike, get a ride from a friend, walk. How is a ride sharing app an unalloyed good on a glorious day for a bike ride?
• WordLens (and its incarnation in Google Translate)
Effort put into foreign languages "the hard way"--study, recall, practice--actually strengthens your mental capacity, rather than being spoonfed answers by an AR system automatically that never leaves space for you to grow, never challenges, and instead treats you like a complete know-nothing, which you will remain if you fully rely on it. Learn some language! It's fun!
• password managers and TOTP 2FA (and mobile cryptocurrency wallets, if you like)
I am not sure how a password manager is an unalloyed good? It allows you to have more accounts and more passwords and not remember anything, but it presents a security risk...
• podcasts
Radio. Books. Talking to people.
• maps with buildings and travel-times on them, and solid public-transit routing models
Learning the streets, navigation skills, learning how to read a bus timetable, asking people, talking to people on the subway--asking for directions!!!?
• competent voice-recognition (and thus the leaps-and-bounds-better accessibility for blind users we have today)
People are pretty good voice recognizers. Who do you want to talk to and what for?
• the eBook ecosystem
You got me there. Books are heavy.
• DSLR-quality phone cameras
• VoIP apps (and thus, the commoditization of cellular providers)
I dunno. People pretend like phones didn't exist before mobile phones. There used to be such a thing as payphones on many street corners, if you really really needed to call from somewhere. Hotel lobbies, bars, your friend's house, etc.
• streaming video-service mobile apps (and thus, demand for 4G cellular infrastructure)
For what really? I mean, so you can ignore everything else around you? I don't get it. Why do you just assume this is so much better than the real world? It just isn't!
He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.
“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
People attribute the "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want..." line from "Taken" to Liam Neeson. I'm sorry, but it's a character played by Liam Neeson who said that!
Seems reality and fiction is getting more and more mixed up... especially if you have Ted or Deadpool showing up to talk shows (then again, this isn't a new thing is it, Bugs Bunny showed up on a talk show in the 1990's).
My 8 year old cousins are crazy about taking my phone to play games on whenever they come to visit; I literally have to hide it from them. Maybe the kids mentioned in the article were a bit younger (and perhaps their parents are a fair bit younger, with different phone use habits to my uncle, who is in his mid 40s)
It's a completely different issue. I was never allowed a Game Boy and was crazy about them when I visited someone who had one. But I would have noticed if my parents were playing Game Boy and not giving me attention all the time.
The BBC writes in British English, and that's how the word is spelled here (or, if you consider them to be distinct words, "mom" is not a word). Just as I'd expect the BBC to write e.g. "colour" even if quoting an American source.
My understanding of newspaper tradition was that quotes can always be edited for clarity or grammar. Some famous quotes go further, e.g. "Crisis? What Crisis?" was printed in quotes despite not being the words Callaghan said.
