A serendipitous lesson

Recently, having brunch with a cousin, we talked about food addictions we’ve battled, like my own longtime habit: diet soda.
I didn’t know way back then that it was formulated to have addictive properties, as cigarettes do. Giving up my favorite, can’t live a day without it beverage was a battle and it was literally years before I experienced my first day during which I wasn’t tempted to grab one at the drive-thru.
Since then, we’ve all learned a lot about the addictive properties manufacturers have knowingly created in certain food ingredients, snack foods, sodas and specialty drinks. It’s up to us to protect our kids and our self. The same is true of behavioral addictions. Some may be less harmful than others but are still invasive in our daily life.
We’ve talked several times about the addiction of easy media. There was that family at breakfast – the youngest was on her LeapFrog, the teen was on his iPad, and the two parents were on their laptops. Today, who even needs a laptop? It’s all in the palm of our hand; our cell phone handles social media, texts emails and FaceTime. We talked about two young girls in a café. They were “having lunch together” but each was on her phone with other people. They weren’t even speaking to each other. Then, there was the woman in a Manhattan restaurant who talked on the phone for over 20 minutes while her lunch partner ate alone at their table. Why bother?
We’ve talked about possible developmental delays in infants and toddlers because caregivers or parents choose to read their phones and text instead of playing peekaboo, clap hands or teaching essential life skills, like facial expression interpretation, through the games we’ve always played with the wee ones.
When we mention being on devices too much, most people will say they don’t believe they fall into that categor ... and they’re right ... they don’t believe it (I used to include myself in that). There is, however, an easy gauge that anyone can try as a simple test to prove or disprove the theory.
Turn it off. Yes, we can simply turn off our social media for two days ... not everywhere, just on any device that we can carry. The clouds will part, the glow of enlightenment will shine down and our own disbelief will explode all over the walls. Our productivity will go up and we won’t believe the accomplishment and joy we gain in our day.
Last weekend, my house was blessed with the presence of all my kids and all their kids. In a moment of crazed “busy-ness,” I let my 9-year-old grandson use my phone (What was I thinking? It’s got Internet availability on it). I just wasn’t thinking and that’s that; there was a buffet to put out. My bad, for sure.

When I got my phone back, my social page was gone from my shortcuts. I tried several times to get it back, but I’m technologically limited. I grew frustrated. I can’t count how many times I reflexively swiped my phone to look for it, out of sheer habit. I had never realized how often I looked at it. The depth of my dependency hit me; what an eye-opener.
When I got my first phone with these capabilities, I restricted myself to a 30-minute spurt of social media, twice in a day, maximum. I maintained it for years, but when I breached it, I never really saw it happen. It’s the same with most of us, and even if we aren’t engaged in the critical teaching of infants to speak a language or perfecting the critical life skill of how to read faces, we need to be fully engaged in our own life.
We’ve all heard, while being ignored, “I’m just checking my emails,” as if that isn’t as rude as whipping out a typewriter or FaceTiming someone. Recently, I saw a sign at an elementary school reminding parents to hang up and greet their children on pickup, “your child is happy to see you,” it said. That’s sad.
It seems this convenience has become quite a burden. Having to be at a computer to check emails or social media is automatically restricting. Sometimes, we realize we need a little help and less accessibility. That can be a great assist when we discover we’re lacking in places we shouldn’t be lacking in.
Screen time can really put a hole in our productivity.
Mind the gap.

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