Maybe Parents Should Limit Our Own Screen Time

At my son's basketball game Saturday morning, I looked over to see a mom pulling out a new Sony Vaio laptop and using her Verizon broadband wireless PC card to connect to the Internet. She spent most of the game showing her courtside seatmates a YouTube video of some interest. For all I know, it could have involved her kid, but even if it did, she wasn't paying much attention to that same kid who was playing a few feet away on the basketball court.

Before I go on, I confess I brought the newspaper, but only read it during timeouts and half time. I'm a big believer that kids have to play sports or participate in extracurricular activities for themselves and not to please or entertain parents. And, believe me, with three kids and a job, I don't get to every game or every marching band competition. But I also believe when we are able to attend, our kids should have our attention, our interest, and not look over to see us constantly looking at a screen, which beckons us out of the moment. What's the point of being there?

I know we live in a multi-tasking time with looser and too-often nonexistent work boundaries, and it's difficult to get a day's work done, every email answered, and get our kids to afterschool and weekend events. But I also know how addictive BlackBerrys and Treos and the ability to connect to the web anywhere can be. My eyes and fingers went to my Treo mail button more times than needed during that same game.

This aptly titled Wall Street Journal article, "BlackBerry Orphans," pops to mind as a must-read for parents who have adopted smartphones into our daily routine to help us be more productive and more present with family at the same time. This year, I've seen so many more moms and dads carrying smartphones, so it's sobering to hear kids tell the WSJ's Katherine Rosman that they worry their parents will crash the car trying to answer an email while driving, or that they are annoyed when they look over at a school ceremony or sports event to see their parents, heads down, thumbs typing away on BlackBerrys.

Rosman writes: Emma Colonna wishes her parents would behave, at least when they're out in public. The ninth-grade student in Port Washington, N.Y., says she has caught her parents typing emails on their Treos during her eighth-grade awards ceremony, at dinner and in darkened movie theaters. "During my recital, I'm 99% sure they were emailing except while I was on stage," she says. "I think that's kind of rude."

Yep, it is. In the same vein, check out Peter Marks terrific Washington Post essay on rude theatergoers extending bad manners from ringing phones and talking to constantly checking smartphones and texting during performances.

Do you agree parents should take stock of our personal tech habits in public at the risk of being hypocritical when telling our kids not to text during dinner, or to stop spending so much time playing video games?

LINKS: BlackBerry Orphans [Wall Street Journal]

Msg to Rude Playgoers: Trn Tht Drned Thng Off! [New York Times]