‘Unplugging’ can be beneficial

READER’S QUESTION: My teenager can­not go any­where with­out her smart phone. When I ask her to “unplug” she becomes irate and says that “all of her friends can use their devices any­time and any­where they want.” Am I old-fashioned? 

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: Con­sid­er­ing our never-ending con­nec­tion to tech­nol­ogy, how did humans avoid extinc­tion pre­vi­ously with­out a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion to guar­an­tee sur­vival? Call it “old fash­ioned,” sen­si­ble, or able to main­tain good bound­aries by lim­it­ing a daughter’s tech­nol­ogy usage, but I applaud your par­ent­ing skills. How I wish more moth­ers and fathers instilled those same rules.

A few days ago at church, a fam­ily was seated in a pew nearby. The teenage daugh­ter never stopped tex­ting or using her smart­phone dur­ing the entirety of the Sun­day ser­vice. It is doubt­ful she ben­e­fit­ted from the minister’s mes­sage that day, while the par­ents seemed obliv­i­ous to her inat­ten­tive­ness. Is it pos­si­ble this same sce­nario occurred when she arrived in the class­room that Mon­day morning?

Two weeks ago, also in church, I made an error by sit­ting next to a woman who had her smart­phone stashed in the hym­nal holder directly in front of us. The device flashed inces­santly and buzzed with each deliv­ery of a new e-mail, text or missed call. Need­less to say, I should have relo­cated else­where. Arriv­ing late, few other seats were avail­able, so I tol­er­ated the “sound and light show” with­out gain­ing much from the Sun­day ser­mon due to the ongo­ing dis­trac­tion of her phone. Even though a device might be switched to “vibrate,” that does not equate to “silent” or unob­tru­sive to others.

Unless you are an on-call physi­cian or in the midst of a fam­ily emer­gency (and prob­a­bly would be absent from church any­way), is it not pos­si­ble to dis­con­nect for one hour on a Sun­day morn­ing, leave your device in the car, and give full atten­tion to some­thing other than tech­nol­ogy? These two church inci­dents are still per­plex­ing to me with each sit­u­a­tion hav­ing min­i­mal con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­ers in close prox­im­ity and the apa­thy of par­ents con­cern­ing respect­ful church decorum.

The March 7 edi­tion of USA TODAY fea­tured a front-page story on our Amer­i­can obses­sion to stay con­tin­u­ously con­nected to the office and increas­ing inabil­ity as a work­force to dis­con­nect from tech­nol­ogy dur­ing “off hours.” As cited in the arti­cle, with the uncer­tain sta­bil­ity of anyone’s career, being read­ily avail­able to an employer 24/7 has become almost the unmen­tioned expectation.

The news­pa­per focused on a law­suit by a Chicago police sergeant. His acces­si­bil­ity to super­vi­sors while off-duty, was with­out mon­e­tary or over-time com­pen­sa­tion for the hours he spent answer­ing tele­phone calls, texts, or e-mails that were work-related, and is the basis for the case. Hav­ing just received court des­ig­na­tion to become a class-action law­suit, the case has other Chicago offi­cers now join­ing as plaintiffs.

USA TODAY also cited that 7-of-10 work­ers admit­ted to let­ting tech­nol­ogy impose upon their per­sonal lives dur­ing sup­posed off-hours. Since less than one-fourth of all com­pa­nies have any spe­cific pol­icy detail­ing off-hours avail­abil­ity by their employ­ees, this area of work life is with­out guide­lines for what is expected. Just like your daughter’s com­ment “that every­one else is doing it,” employ­ees are feel­ing pres­sure to con­form if they know other co-workers are answer­ing the boss’s calls, e-mails or texts at all hours.

Even though many think that tech­nol­ogy gives us more free time, that assump­tion accord­ing to USA TODAY is a fal­lacy. The mobil­ity of devices has led to our abil­ity “to work any­where at any­time and a col­lapse of bound­aries between work and per­sonal life,” per Rick Segal, world­wide pres­i­dent of gyro, a global ad agency.

Dis­con­nect­ing from tech­nol­ogy while on vaca­tion, at a movie the­ater, attend­ing a con­cert, eat­ing a meal, dri­ving or dur­ing church, seems sadly almost an impos­si­bil­ity in today’s soci­ety. Alien­ation of fam­ily, friends, and oth­ers in close prox­im­ity can be prob­lem­atic to human rela­tion­ships when hand-held tech­nol­ogy becomes more impor­tant than the peo­ple nearby. It is my opin­ion that poten­tially divorce rates will con­tinue to climb as tech­nol­ogy becomes more inva­sive, espe­cially when account­abil­ity to employ­ers is non-ceasing and unin­ter­rupted “fam­ily time” dimin­ishes. It is inevitable that this infor­ma­tion over­load will take a toll on those we should cher­ish the most but appre­ci­ate the least.

Tonight, instead of rush­ing home to open your lap­top and con­tinue the work­day, how about devot­ing a few unin­ter­rupted hours to your spouse, chil­dren or the evening meal­time? The focus on them ver­sus your com­puter, smart­phone, tablet or tele­vi­sion might be greatly appre­ci­ated and could rekin­dle true com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­ver­sa­tion with­out dis­trac­tions ruin­ing price­less moments with fam­ily, friends or your marriage.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Wednes­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Mar 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.