When Parents Are The Ones Too Distracted By Devices
by STEVE HENN
April 16, 2014 4:06 PM
ET
4 min 2 sec
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Having a teenager lost in
his or her cellphone — texting friends and communicating with parents in
monosyllabic grunts — has become a trope of the Internet age. But teens are not
the only ones distracted by their devices.
Many parents have the same
problem. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm one of them.
A couple weeks ago, my
12-year-daughter, Ella, staged an intervention. She and my wife basically
threatened to take my phone and break it.
"Sometimes at night
you'll just stand around and ... you'll have your phone out and you'll just
type and you'll just stand there," Ella says.
Ella can be a brutal mimic.
And as she describes my distraction, she strikes up my smartphone pose: the
phone balanced against my belly — thumbs madly typing away — (as if by holding
the phone that way no one will notice that I'm on it).
"Lila's ready to go to
bed, everybody's trying to get people to read to them and you're just standing
there in the middle of the hallway reading your texts and texting other
people," she adds.
Hearing from my oldest that
I'm ignoring her little sister stings.
"Has that gotten
worse?" I ask.
"It hasn't really
changed; it got worse when we moved to California," Ella says.
That was when I started
covering technology.
"Do you feel jealous of
my cellphone? Do you get mad at it?" I ask.
That earns an eye roll and a
laugh.
"No, why would I get
jealous of a cellphone?"
"I don't know," I
say. "Do you feel like you are competing for attention?"
"Yeah."
With that she wins the
argument.
And Ella isn't the only kid
who feels this way about her parent's relationship with devices.
Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical and
consulting psychologist at Harvard, recently wrote The Big
Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.
For her book, Steiner-Adair interviewed more than 1,000 kids from the ages of 4
to 18. She talked to hundreds of teachers and parents.
"One of the many things
that absolutely knocked my socks off," she says, "was the consistency
with which children — whether they were 4 or 8 or 18 or 24 — talked about
feeling exhausted and frustrated and sad or mad trying to get their parents'
attention, competing with computer screens or iPhone screens or any kind of
technology, much like in therapy you hear kids talk about sibling
rivalry."
Steiner-Adair says one of
the challenges we all face is that these devices are wired to grab our
attention and keep it. She says the most successful apps are popular, even
addictive, because they tap into a
reward mechanism in our brains.
"Yes, when you are
plugged into your screen the part of your brain that lights up is the to-do
list," Steiner-Adair says. "Everything feels urgent — everything
feels a little exciting. We get a little dopamine hit when we accomplish
another email — check this, check that. And when a child is waiting by or comes
into your room and it's one of those mini-moments and you don't know — that's
the hard thing about parenting — you don't know if this is the ordinary
question or they're coming with something really important.
It's very hard as a grown-up to disengage and give them your attention with the
[same] warmth that you give them, the same tone of voice that you greet them if
they interrupt you when you're scrambling eggs."
A couple of years ago, my
daughter got a laptop for school. And because she was becoming more independent,
we got her a phone. We set up rules for when she could use this stuff and when
she'd need to put it away. We created a charging station, outside her bedroom,
where she had to plug in these devices every night. Basically — except for
homework — she has to put it all away when she comes home.
Steve Henn's daughter Faye
in a treehouse, which they built together after he put away his smartphone for
the weekend.
Steve Henn/NPR
Steiner-Adair says most
adults don't set up similar limits in their own lives.
"We've lost the
boundaries that protect work and family life," she says. "So it is
very hard to manage yourself and be as present to your children in the moments
they need you."
Steiner-Adair says that
whether you are a parent or not, carving out time to turn off your devices — to
disconnect from the wired world and engage with the real people who are all
around you — is one of the best gifts you can give yourself and the people your
love.
After my daughter's little
intervention, I made myself a promise to create my own charging station. To
plug my phone in — somewhere far away — when I am done working for the day.
I've been trying to leave it there untouched for most of the weekend.
And while I still find
myself reaching for it — or checking my pocket — leaving my phone behind is
also kind of freeing. Last weekend, instead of checking Twitter and reading
tech blogs I built a treehouse.
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