Put your smartphone down
During a recent talk and panel discussion on social media at Point Park University, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Chief Digital Officer Sree Sreenivasan mentioned a quote from Les Hinton, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal: “The scarcest resource of the 21st century is human attention.”
Thank social media itself for that. We now live in a world where the number of online friends trumps the importance of real-world friends. We now live in a world where the skewed way that we portray ourselves online determines the perception that others have of us. Note: life isn’t always perfect, we promise. Take the good, but realize that there is bad, too.
We now live in a world where it’s not enough to just take photos of what we are doing – we feel the need to immediately post to Facebook, to Twitter, to Instagram that we are eating, attending a sporting event, getting engaged, or even giving birth – as it’s happening, complete with photos to prove it.
Most disappointing is that we now live in a world where finding out what people are eating, who is attending a sporting event, getting engaged or giving birth is more important than what is going on right in front of us. This newspaper has written a previous editorial with the opinion that smartphones and tablets are not babysitters for children. We have since noticed that not only at restaurants, but in doctor’s offices, in line at the grocery store, at sporting events, possibly in the delivery room, and, unfortunately, on the playground or even at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, that parents are glued to their screens, not paying attention to what their little ones are doing right in front of them.
Not only is this dangerous – a distracted parent makes a child an easy target – but it is sad. Children crave attention, and they deserve it. What is on your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feed will be there in a few hours. The opportunity to watch your child interact in an exhibit or go down the sliding board won’t. Childhood is fleeting, and time is something that we cannot get back.
Parents, put the phones down and pay attention to your children. Take photos of what’s going on, sure, but wait until you actually have a free moment to post them online for friends and family to see. Be present in the moment.
Your children will thank you for it now, and you will thank yourself for it in the years to come.