Divisive Devices

This Last week on Mom.me, I wrote about tech and sausage factories:

As the age-old adage goes, which I am completely butchering, the guy who works at the sausage factory isn’t eating the sausage. And so it didn’t come as a surprise to me when I found out that Steve Jobs had a tech-free home life. Kind of like how everyone in LA works in television/forbids their kids from watching television. Ha ha, right?

Sausage factory, man.

I happen to think we are addicted to tech in a way that is potentially hazardous to our health, our relationships and our society, even though many of us benefit from social media, community, gaming … and all of the things that technological devices make possible, myself included. However, I believe that our need to constantly check and refresh and respond to a world that exists off the side of the boat is costing us our relationships with the humans in our homes and communities and focusing our attention away from each other, eye contact becoming an antiquated concept.

And, by the by, I am in NO way innocent. I have to put my phone in another room or else I will refresh and check things. I have to disable alerts on all of my social media platforms in order to get work done and I have been called out on multiple occasions for checking my email when I should NOT be checking my email. But ... I am an old person and my kids are young people, and while I realize that tech is part of their lives in a way it was not for me as a child, I want to give them a childhood that is as screen-free as possible.

(Airplanes don't count, btw. We survived our flight thanks to movies and headphones on laptops and Hal's iPad and will be utilizing these modern day gadgets, once again, two days from now, when we fly home.)

But other than that... sorry kids. You're going to have to sit at the dinner table and learn how to behave without a device in your hands. Because if not now, when? 

More here... 

GGC