Shootin' It Straight - The Is Family On 5%

Phones have killed the family unit. It's all about individualism.

I watched a clip of a family from years gone by depicting an evening at home. The family gathered in the living room, piling onto couches as a younger child slid a VHS tape into a VCR. The family chuckled at the motion picture as they all sat nestled together. It made me think about how far we've fallen in such a short span.

Family meals, whether at home or out, are now littered with earbuds stuck in one ear or headphones completely blanking others out. Phones are cradled in one hand while food is transferred with the remaining free appendage. Actual time spent gathered in a family setting, talking without electronic interference, is becoming slim to none.

We rarely have a game night, movie night, or social gathering of any circumstance where phones aren't the center of attention. The fact that entertainment is now individually dished out through four-inch screens has all but assured that we can't even agree on a movie, much less focus on one as a collective group.

I fully believe this has also led to a disconnect between children and parents. The common ground of sharing a laugh and bonding over a goofy game move during a classic board game is disappearing. It's been replaced by multiple phones pumping individualized content into every person in the household.

The youth are fed a steady diet of nonsense, short-form content in a chopped-up method that makes it nearly impossible to maintain attention for any length of time. The adults are consumed with their own content, from dramatic videos to rabbit holes on websites. The end result is a fractured family unit where cohesion is becoming a casualty.

I know the days of Norman Rockwell's picturesque scenes of a family making hot cocoa as snow blows against the windowpane may never cycle back. But we've fallen off the ledge in the age of the smartphone.

I realize phones aren't leaving us anytime soon. They are ingrained in our daily lives as much as anything I know. The only true cure is self control. We must lay that little rectangular device down and just engage fully with those around us.
Tell a story. Laugh at a joke. Listen with intent when someone tells you how their day was. Just enjoy one stream of entertainment at a time.

It doesn't happen instantly. We must treat it almost like a disease and unlearn so much of what we've become calloused and accustomed to. Breaking the habit will take some effort, but perhaps the reward is worth it.

The blues singer Keb' Mo' once said in a song that "we're all victims of comfort and connoisseurs of pain." Perhaps we are, because the very thing we once purchased to stay connected to family has now grown into the very thing that tears us apart.