Family

Put those phones down in 2018

The New Year is here and as always, people have resolutions to guide them through the year. Whether they abide by their resolutions is besides the point. What is important is the determination and willingness to change for the better.

As we plan to improve in business, finance, upgrade our academic or professional qualifications and improve in our shortcomings, I thought it is high time we started giving our families the attention they deserve by putting away those smart phones, pads or tablets.

Family members engrossed with gadgets

Gadgets have become a huge revolution in families and social circles. Most people barely put them down for fear of missing out on social media updates while missing out on family time.

Suddenly, these electronic gadgets have taken over all the attention that members of the family deserve.

It is like the cell phone is the most attention-seeker robbing people of the human interaction. It is hardly ever neglected.

The social fabric becomes loosened further when every member of the family has their cell phone being entertained by people miles away, when they would rather use the time to strengthen family bonds.

It is clear insane to keep in touch with people we spend the entire day with at work, business places and schools at the expense of family members.

Do you know that the success of all the resolutions, to some extent, depends on the minimal use of cell phones? True, especially social networks as compared other educative sites.

If our businesses are to grow, why not concentrate and invest time with other business-minded folks at reasonable times unlike forwarding non-business related useless video clips and messages at awkward times.

Certainly, for those of us who crave for academic excellence, especially for our children, the least we can do is discourage their being too often on phones, being entertained by lousy jokes.

Phones have been known to contribute to lack of communication in families.

According to liveboldandbloom.com, intimacy is hard to achieve or maintained when your phone keeps beeping with alerts, notifications and e-mail reminders.

Read the site: “A constant, merciless distraction, our smartphones have come to replace deep-felt, long conversations in view of non-urgent, shallow tasks; retweeting a fun tweet, updating your Facebook status for the 136th time.

“It, surely, becomes irritating to talk to a member whose obvious reply is a node or a plea for you to repeat what you said for a 100th time. Surprisingly, people can chat with strangers on social media for a long time, but cannot sustain a conversation with their own flesh and blood”.

Liveboldandbloom.com further warns of phone addictions, saying in the long-run, this will drive us further apart with our family members.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, we lost sight what real-life priorities look like.

As you might expect, our mobile device obsession weakens our relationships, drives people away and disappoints and hurts others. Happy New Year and please, put those phones down.

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