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Why Do You Love Your iPhone More Than Your Precious Child?

October 5, 2012 by 11 Comments

Recently, parents learned a new way they are failing. And no it’s not that you once gave your kid formula or use a pacifier. Parents, we’re on our phones too much.

Apparently, all the modern conveniences of our time aren’t there so we can catch a break, call a friend or even look up a recipe. No, according to the Wall Street Journal, they are there so we can spend more time constantly hovering over our children, in case they, god forbid, move on their own UNSUPERVISED and POSSIBLY BUMP INTO SOMETHING.

Citing this distracted parenting as a modern phenomena, the Wall Street Journal notes, “Is high-tech gadgetry diminishing the ability of adults to give proper supervision to very young children? Faced with an unending litany of newly proclaimed threats to their kids, harried parents might well roll their eyes at this suggestion. But many emergency-room doctors are worried: They see the growing use of hand-held electronic devices as a plausible explanation for the surprising reversal of a long slide in injury rates for young children.”

Using absolutely no studies at all, the Wall Street Journal wants you to know they are completely worried about your kids and you should be too, if only you’d stop Instagramming and be a freaking parent.

My god. Don’t these parents think of the consequences of looking away for a second? What if your kid falls and…I can barely type the words…SCRAPES HIS LEG! I know, right. Don’t you feel like a total jerk now?

We need to get back to the olden days of parenting. When parents were totally there for their kids. Did Ma Ingalls text while she was watching Mary, Laura, Carrie and Grace? No! She encouraged them to gather Buffalo poop in the wide open prairie, while she milked the cows and baked bread and churned butter. Did Pa play on his iPad? If by play on his iPad you mean he tethered baby Grace to the bed in the middle of their dirt house, so he could go feed the livestock on a cold winter’s night. God forbid the stove go out. We lose more babies that way. Amirite, Pa?

Or how about my grandma in the 50s? Do you think she looked away for a second while she lit her cigarette and screamed for my mom to go play outside and not come back for 3 hours? Probably.

And now you modern parents, with all your irresponsible “structured playtime,” “attachment parenting,” and your distracted “helicopter parenting,” you dare to look away for one second while you upload a picture of your daughter to Facebook? For shame.

I think if Americans need to do one thing its make our babies even MORE of a focus of our daily existence.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go put a mirror under my daughter’s nose to check her breathing while she naps. Then, I have to write her an apology note for taking my eyes away from her napping body for the two hours it took to write this. That’s right, two hours. Don’t call DHS.

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Filed Under: Babies, Don't Do This!
  • Melanie

    I love my iPhone more than my kids some of the time. The baby doesn’t really do anything yet so I can text my friends while I watch her sleep all day and the iPhone keeps the big kid occupied when I need it most. Best. Invention. Ever. Oh and thus far, no one has suffered a horrific accident on my watch. Fingers crossed.

  • Diana L

    Unfortunately, I basically agree with the WSJ on this. I don’t know about injury rates, but I do think that electronics can interfere with parenting. I’m not going back to the days of Ma and Pa Ingalls, just 10 years – 20 years ago. (ouch) There is a difference between talking to your friend at the park or talking on the phone. With your friend, you can jump up if there’s a problem or push your kids on the swing. Your kid can talk to you. When you’re on the phone, it’s more of an interruption to interact with your kid. If you’re grocery shopping with your kid, you’re going to talk to them and they’re going to learn words, if you’re shopping and on the phone, they’re going to get bored and cry. Being able to carry my phone around wasn’t a temptation I had to deal with and I’m glad.

    The Internet and social networking can really suck you away from interacting with the people in your house, too. (Also games and the soul-sucking addiction known as Pinterest.) This, I’ve found, applies even when your kids are older. I have to remind myself that when they’re home from school, I want to be available to talk to. And my husband and I have recently agreed to cut down on the parallel play on our computers and look at actual two-person board games.

    I wouldn’t get rid of the Internet or anything. They add a lot to parenting. There’s nothing like looking up what to do for a fever in the middle of the night, or googling some question your kid has, or talking to your friends about a problem. I think parents deserve some time talking to friends and goofing off. I just think that electronics and the Internet can add up to interfere with parenting and family life in general.

    • http://twitter.com/madfoot madfoot

      I suppose they CAN. Of course, a beer in the evening CAN turn into alcoholism, and talking to a playground dad CAN turn into a hot but homewrecking affair. I think the main point here is that this article turns a lot of could-happens into will-happens, and people unfairly target the iPhone as a distraction when it is just as often the very reason you can be out with your kids in the first freakin’ place.

      • Diana L

        My observation is that when my kids were little and I had no iPhone, I was more able to pay attention to them than I would be if I had one with me. (I was also completely able to get out without it.)

        I also see people with just plain cell phones paying less attention to their kids because they are on the phone. It distracts you from driving, why not from a kid? If you were hiring a person to watch your child, would you want them to be on the phone? How much?

    • lyzl

      I liked the point made above. If this were books, people wouldn’t be batting an eye. And the article has no real evidence that technology is leading to an increase in non-fatal accidents. It’s just an assumption. And even if it was, the increase is so minimal and the impact so non-impacty, that I fail to see the cause for alarm. The point is, kids will always get hurt. Parents will always get distracted. No case in making people crazy about it.

      • http://www.facebook.com/kellie.garwood Kellie Garwood

        ONE fatality is too much! No child should die because mom or dad was texting or facebooking.

        • lyzl

          Um, no fatalities have even been proven. Also, if such a fatality were to occur, it occurs to me that the parent in question would be irresponsible whether they had a smart phone or not. But I’m sure all the other parents of the world appreciate you judging them.

  • http://twitter.com/madfoot madfoot

    I’ll tell you something else, I’ll bet the WSJ article author wouldn’t bat an eyelash if he saw me reading a magazine at the playground. Well GUESS WHAT SHERLOCK, i have the Kindle app and I’m reading your stupid article on it RIGHT NOW. SPLA-DAMMM.

    • lyzl

      Best point ever. WSJ author, consider yourself owned!

  • Diana L

    How about an experiment? Spend a day or two with small kids without using any electronic devices. Or just go to the playground and turn everything off.

    See if it makes a difference or not and how, positive and negative.

    Work with it if it’s hard at first. Experiment with different limits – no phone or Facebook, games okay versus cold turkey, etc.
    I would not count naptime or any time when someone else is watching the kid/s.
    And maybe write about it. The no-phone challenge.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kellie.garwood Kellie Garwood

    The problem isn’t a quick picture upload to fabebook. The problem is parents cant get off of facebook or whatever they are doing on their phone. You must what I see. I own a pizza shop on a very busy street. I see people come in to pick up their food and they look up to give their name or place their order and they go right back to their phone. Many have kids that we have to keep our eye on so they dont do something they shouldn’t. That busy street is the sidewalk width away from our front door. I have had to yell for kids to get away from the door because they was opening it. Many of these parents NEVER even look up from their phone to see what the lady behind the counter is telling their child to stop doing. A scraped knee is one thing but being hit by a car (many of them actually) going 50 mph, well that seems to be a little different. I see it all the time not just there. I had to tell my daughter I was going to shove her phone where the sun don’t shine because she wouldn’t have a conversation with me because she was too busy doing whatever it is she does on there. Kids are not being talked they are being ignored. Thery are learning terrible social skills by watching their parents not socializing. When your grandma told your mom to go play for 3 hours she went out and played and exercised. Now kids do like their parents do they sit on the devices and get fat. I see the gadget issue to be a huge problem without any studies too. It seems to me that you are judging this by how you do this. Maybe you don’t do it the way MANY parents do it. I too read articles on the playground and i like to look at facebook. I don’t sit on it and only get off because my eyes hurt. i get off because I have a 3 y/o daughter and 3 y/o granddaughter that need attention. The y need me to talk to them and have fun. They need me to listen when they have questions and I need to answer. I see people ignore their child when they are trying to ask them questions or just tell them something. Just the other day I was at a yard sale and this woman was on her phone not talking but on fb or whatever and her little boy, about 18 months, headed out the open gate onto the sidewalk. I run over and turned him around to go back in the yard. I said “your little boy just went out on the sidewalk near the street.” She scooted him back into the yard and said nothing. A few minutes later I was out on the sidewalk talking with someone and he walked out the gate down the sidewalk and what was she doing? She was looking her phone again. Talking on the phone you can watch your kids but looking at your phone you need your eyes to do that. A few minutes here and there I see nothing wrong with if you know where your child is and what he is doing. sorry for the long comment but I felt yuou just don’t understand what is going on with other parents. I also think that it is something child predators are watching. They are looking at the child whose parent has their eyes on their phone more than their child.