Possibly. Ladies and gents, meet the new modern family, courtesy reporting in the New York Times:
Ms. Vavra, a cosmetics industry executive in Manhattan, looked up from her iPad, where she was catching up on the latest spring looks at Refinery29.com, and noticed that her husband, Michael Combs, was transfixed, streaming the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament on his laptop. Their son, Tom, 8, was absorbed by the Wii game Mario Kart on the widescreen television. Their daughter, Eve, 10, was fiddling with a game app called the Love Calculator on an iPod Touch. “The family was in the same room, but not together,” Ms. Vavra recalled.
Unfortunately for any Luddites in attendance, this is simply how it is, and will be in the future. The NYT reports that nearly 60% of U.S. families with kids have two or more computers. A further 60% of those families are wired or wireless and have long since jacked into the Internet to consume kitten pictures and hilarious .gifs of other kittens.
Driving the growth, some experts say, is the surge of tablet use (i.e. iPad) and apps (iOS and Android), as well as a cultural acceptance that email and texting might be, at times, a bit more convenient than spoken word. Case in anecdotal, completely depressing point:
Brad Kahn, an environmental consultant in Seattle, said he often communicates with his wife, Erin, by e-mail even when they are seated a few feet apart on the sofa with their laptops. He will cut her off if she starts instructing him orally about what he calls his “honey-do” list of weekend chores, he said, and ask her to send it electronically. To Mr. Kahn, 40, it’s simply more efficient. “If I misunderstood any directions, having a written record can be very useful in maintaining marital bliss,” he said.
Yikes. Maybe progress isn’t so great, after all. What’s your story? Has family life changed from one of dinner table conversation to wireless, voiceless multi-screen non-interaction on the sofa, or what? [NYT]
Aaron
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 3:40 PMI call bull.
I’m the head of a very tech addicted family of five and while we spend our days plugged into a host of appliances we still sit down and have dinner together almost every night and talk about our days and we regularly have family movie nights or (mostly for me and the boys) family Halo nights or Street Fighter tournaments.
As per usual the article has the causation backwards, ‘you have these gadgets and thats why your family has communication issues’, rather than, ‘your family has communication issues, and as a symptom dissapears into their gadget worlds’.
Being a technophile and an active member of your family aren’t mutually exclusive activities.
Stewart Walker
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 4:11 PMAgreed, however there are people out there who simply cannot divorce the gadget/comms thing, and probably has something to do with a tech addiction/simply dropping into a world where doing A = getting B, with out having to both talking\interacting with anyone.
While this is probably more prevailent in the US, I imagine there is going to start being this sort of issue occuring in Australia in the coming years. How often do we hear of someone dieing at a PC while playing a marathon nonstop gaming session to eat, drink, sleep, or having a toilet break.
While sad to admit, this is going to be the future unless you enforce a limit to device interaction. Although, back in the 50′s people said that TV was the devils work and that generation turned out fine right?
boc
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 4:51 PM‘your family has communication issues, and as a symptom dissapears into their gadget worlds’
This.
Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 4:50 PMBut it does have an effect somewhat. When you are not too comfortable or bored, you slide out your phone/gadget and play around with it.
Where as in the past, you had no choice except to have a chat with the person/family member
I know a few friends how are more comfortable in chatting/emailing to solve or talk about problems rather than talking or speaking face to face nowadays
Tarik
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 8:11 PMNo reason for ‘family time’ and ‘gadget time’ to be mutually exclusive.
AWOL
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 9:05 PMI really don’t see what’s wrong with this. There’s a great quote I like to use whenever something family related comes up:
“You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family”
Really, a child has no reason to communicate with their parents past a certain age. Any obligation they’d feel to do so would be by a situation forced upon them. Honestly, removal from the environment most modern Western households tend to have can only be a good thing.
JPKW
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:02 PMWe love our gadgets, but we can and do still have a conversation while we use them. In fact, their content gives us even more to talk about. Their small size means they dominate the room less than the TV, the true mind-numbing communication killer. However, emailing someone in the same room is stupid.