Digital-Free Togetherness Is the Best Holiday Gift |
On Thanksgiving Day, an hour or two before 22 guests began arriving at our house, I sent out an unplanned but urgent text message: "Take a deep breath...we are planning to collect all phones at the door tomorrow for the duration of our gathering. This is to allow us to drop in more fully to our special time together. It will be amazing!"
Even as I sent the message, I worried about the pushback, the irritated remarks, the potential litany of excuses.
It turns out that I needn't have worried at all. As the basket was filled with grubby-screened hunks of metal, I heard audible sighs of relief and even a grateful comment or two. "I'm so glad that you are doing this," my brother-in-law told me.
"This is wonderful" was the general vibe, even though I had to help detach a few relatives from their phones.
As a therapist working with both kids and adults, I hear all sorts of complaints about screen addiction directed at all sorts of people. "My dad's addicted to his phone," "My kids melt down if I try to set limits with their Ipads," and "My son's distracted by texts when he should be doing his homework," are just a smattering of these.
Our technological gadgets have become a part of us; we live and breathe through them these days. We have reached a point where we expect to interact with our devices—watches, IPADs, computers, TVs, and video games— nearly 24/7.
The pervasive presence of technology comes at the expense of so much. We have lost slow mornings in bed, silly games with siblings, and the gift of simply noticing our surroundings on a walk through the neighborhood. Everywhere we go—on the public bus, in a local park,........