Here’s something I wonder, as I think about faithful uses of technology.
I agree with Sherry Turkle (author of Alone Together) that there should be certain zones that are smartphone-free. Sacred spaces, if you will, such as the carpool line or the dinner table. Places where we are focusing on the people we are sharing physical spaces with. Places where children or other loved ones may to be able to look us in the eye.
But what about the breakfast table?
I grew up with parents who read the newspaper during breakfast. For some people, this remains an essential morning practice. Newspapers invite browsing—flipping from item to item, sharing an interesting tidbit with someone else.
How is reading on a smartphone the same or different than browsing the morning paper? You could argue that a phone is even less problematic, since you don’t have this big wall of newsprint between you and your breakfast companions.
When newspapers first came out, was there a hue and cry that reading them in the presence of other people was “taking people out of the moment,” or “distancing them from the people around them”?
Discuss…
In our family, breakfast is definitely more of a solitary reading time than a family discussion time. Books or magazines or the ipad . . . (we only have dumb phones at our house). I suppose each family has a different rhythm.
“I grew up with parents who read the newspaper during breakfast. ” I was surprised to read this line - but then I quizzed my kids and learned they would say the same thing! So there you go.
If I could use a computer analogy here - to me it is a question of process priority. Your kids should be high pri processes - they get to interrupt lower priority processes immediately. Driving should be (but often isn’t) a REAL TIME process - even your kids lose the face-off when you’re driving. Smartphones are low pri processes - they only get your attention if you are otherwise idle.
I agree with you Ted about the surprise I felt when I read MA’s line about Jim and I reading the newspapers at breakfast. I don’t remember it that way, but then again, my “memory” died when Sherry did.
This is a great way of thinking about it… Thank you!!
everywhere and all the time is a smartphone “dead zone” for me (I resist having one). As far as wall of newspaper, I rip out the page(s) I intend to read. As far as historical, I was amazed on the New York subway (beginning 1966) the ingenious ways people fold and unfold to read the Daily News or the Post (probably not the NY Times) without obliterating those sitting or, most likely, standing next to them. Of course the subway is not the breakfast table.
I check the weather and cruise through the headlines and facebook on my smartphone at breakfast. I don’t respond to emails or anything like that, but cruise through-often showing things to Selam that I think she’d be interested in. She reads a book at breakfast, too. For me, breakfast is a segue into the day and not super-interactive. For some reason, though, I feel like I would be offended if someone was writing emails and playing games during breakfast-but reading doesn’t bother me. I guess it’s because looking up from reading is normal, but looking up from an engaged project would be harder? I’m weird, though.
as I learned at Family Cluster (training week, NH): you are special, unique and unrepeatable
I agree-there’s a level of engagement with games and emails that doesn’t let you pull out of the experience and respond to what’s happening at the table.
My family knows I cannot conversation until I’ve consumed at least 3/4 of a cup of coffee. Solitary time at the breakfast table, for sure.
*insert “have a” between cannot & conversation!
I grew up reading the newspaper at the breakfast table also. You were allowed to read that or the side of cereal boxes. Nothing else. At dinner time, you were not allowed to bring anything to read at the dinner table, no newspaper no books, if the phone rang, the caller was told, so and so will call you back after the meal. Dinner time was a time to check with others and find out about their day. I feel like checking your smartphone or websites is very disengaging from the people around you in the morning or at dinnertime. I feel like you can easily pull someone into a conversation with a newspaper article in the morning or something you heard during the day.
No electronics at the table is our rule. I let them break it sometimes if it’s just the three of us, because it feels more like guy time, for some reason. (Kind of the same category as camping.) But full family? Put it away.
I think the blanket prohibition certainly makes things easier.
The girls both have iPad minis and they are not allowed at the table at any time. Things are a little looser with Robert and me, in part because we both use MyFitnessPal to track our meals, so the phones are at the table at breakfast. We also will check traffic and weather and so forth.
I just feel like I want to interact w/ the folks w/ whom I am sharing a meal — breakfast not being an exception. If I’m eating alone, then that’s another story… I’ll always have a book when that’s the case. I’ve had the experience of someone checking, briefly, what’s on their phone if a message comes in — and then setting it aside; that feels okay. But, taking a call, browsing the net, texting to the exclusion of others — definitely not my cup of tea. I, too, still am in the “dumb phone” majority — and don’t especially want that temptation of all that a smart phone offers for distraction.
I don’t want to have breakfast with anyone, even my family, so this is, I suppose, fraught for me from the get-go. I can’t wait until we can all bring reading material to the breakfast table. Dinner or special occasion breakfast: whole different story.
I grew up in a household in which every meal was communally solitary: we each had our own bookholder to read whatever book each of us was reading at the time. Now? We have meals together seldom enough that it’s a Big Deal and it’s all about personal sharing and interaction.