Family closeness without smart phones and other technology interference is celebrated on American Family Day. Held the first Sunday each August it gives time for families to spend time together playing games, talking, walking and biking to connect with one another. Some visit or involve extended family as well. Experts are of the opinion that technology has caused family members, especially children, to simply zone out and opt out of in person human interaction. Other studies shows a very slight margin in favor of technology. They claim it connects people to friends and improves school performance however it was also noted this was a very small margin and that that technology companies like Apple Amazon Google and Microsoft were heavily involved in providing computers and other educational materials to schools. Not only children but adult parents were also spending a large amount of their day using technology including smart phones and tablets for online surfing, texting and messaging. The American Academy of Pediatrics has actually developed tools that provide a schedule of technology use to limit it for the benefit of the family.
Key Takeaways:
- Tim Farnum, anesthesiologist and dad, wants Colorado to ban smartphone sales to pre-teen kids.
- Farnum believes his sons showed scary and zombie-like withdrawal symptoms when he took the devices away.
- Heartland Institute blogger and journalist, Robert G.Holland, notes that it’s truly the parents job and not the government’s job to monitor their kids’ technology device use.
“By a slim margin, they even thought heavy screen time hurt emotional health more than it helped.”
Read more: https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/families-unplugged-screen-time-vs-face-time