Does technology fragment family life, encouraging family members to prefer private screen gazing to conversation, physical play, and community involvement? A provincial statutory holiday prompts the author to question whether family members are using technology to deepen their lives together.
Family Day
In Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, we have just enjoyed a statutory holiday, meant to support families. As the Ontario Government states:
Generally speaking, most employees will get a day off with pay enabling them to spend time with their family and loved ones. It will also give employees a day off between New Year’s Day and Easter, which is a long period of time in which people need a rest.I see the day as a chance to get out with family members and friends and celebrate our shared life together. Most malls were closed, along with banks, supermarkets, and libraries. However, on such a warm day, there seemed relatively few people walking and playing outside. Where was everyone?
Family Snapshot
Don't misunderstand me. I treasure my own tech life and see the benefits of the "interweb" for my extended family. My wife has a new iPodTouch to swiftly access her favourite BBC news, music, and readings. My daughter carefully researches university grants online, while my son and his friend break new ground in techno-rap. My brothers and their wives are web-savvy genealogists, photographers, and inventors. We keep in touch with family in the UK via email. My mother at 87 has embraced the iPad and now reads again with big print and well-lit screens.
But are we closer as a family simply because as individuals we are privately wired to the web? Connectivity is not synonymous with connectedness. As parents, we are now promoting the sustained telephone conversation over the truncated email or text. This weekend's board games of Scrabble and The London Game engaged us more deeply in family togetherness than watching a movie on TV would have done.
Family Connections
My ironic illustration above frames a real hope for families today. I would not turn back the clock—from digital to analog—to the good old (stereotypic) days. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. But the holiday caused me to ask if families are finding fruitful ways to harness technology to really connect: to talk more, explore the natural world, play creatively, and be neighbourly. Sometimes this means turning off, not tuning in!
We address the problems of using technology in schools often enough but fail to question our growing absorption in virtual pursuits throughout a typical family day. Parents complain that it is difficult to find time to eat together, yet no one wants to miss the latest text or tweet. I fear more family time is spent discussing the latest gadget than the effects of technology on our life together. I also worry that we continue to substitute passive consuming for active living. Are we, to borrow Neil Postman's warning about television technology, "amusing ourselves to death" with the latest technology?
How many of us turn off the computer on holidays? How many could? Most kids don't even see this as a problem. And no amount of free time, holiday or not, seems long enough to encourage important reflection about how technology is changing contemporary family life.
Can we sustain a strong family life in the Information Age, a life that should be marked by balance, time, and awareness? These old virtues could be good criteria to apply to our home use of technology.
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