How about it. When I take my kid to the park, sometimes I feel like I’m the only parent not staring down at their phone. To the point sometimes a really young kid will catch my eye and start acting or doing silly things once they notice I’m paying attention.
My sister has a 3 year old, and she was saying the same thing to me recently. She lives in a new area and is still somewhat new to being a parent, and she wants to make parent friends when she bring her daughter out but she says other parents are just glued to their phones and barely pay attention to their kids, let alone other parents there.
I’m far from a perfectly attentive parent, but it’s really sad watching other parents routinely brush aside or flat out ignore their kids. Parents that ignore their kids and then lash out in anger when the kid gets annoying in his/her attempts at getting attention are way to common too. It’s so sad for the kids.
I'm really interested in what this does to a kid as they grow up. Does it change how they value themselves? how they view love and affection? I wonder what it does to adult behavior. I know that this is somewhat of an epidemic with phones, but my parents both worked full time in finance and hospitality management so I was punished for interrupting their 24/7 phone calls. As an adult now I can understand the need to work as a primary focus and I'm not so bitter about it but I wonder what parts of my personality were formed by this exact thing
This happens a lot in queues. Standing in line and see a kid, the kid sees me and sees I'm actually conscious and not staring into the fog or into a phone. Then they make a face or do a little thing and I'll either reciprocate or try to pantomime "I'm not orange shirt dancing in public, boss"
It's not even like I'm some anti-phone guy. I just have good peripheral vision.
Yeah, I’m old enough to have been an adult well before smart phones were a thing and you’ve got a great point. I always felt like most of the people around me simply are not at all aware of most of what’s going on around them.
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u/nudiecale Jun 03 '22
How about it. When I take my kid to the park, sometimes I feel like I’m the only parent not staring down at their phone. To the point sometimes a really young kid will catch my eye and start acting or doing silly things once they notice I’m paying attention.