When I was 10 years old back in 1989, life was a whole lot different. I don't remember gathering the family for a sit down dinner to be the surmountable task that it is today. Between facebook, Ipods and pads, Xbox, and all the other gadgets and gizmos available to us today, sitting down and having face to face conversations with our kids and parents have really declined in our society. Hence this cartoon I found on YouTube.
Is this accurate? Is this really how families are interacting today? If so, how is this affecting our society as a whole?
According to an article in USA Today, Michael Gilbert of the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of South Carolina reported that that 28% of Americans interviewed in a study last year said they had been spending less time with members of their households. That's nearly triple the 11% who said that in 2006. He found that people were spending less time with family members just as social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are booming, along with the importance people place on them.
Gilbert added, "it can't be a good thing that families are spending less face-to-face time together. Ultimately it leads to less cohesive and less communicative families." In the first half of the decade, people reported spending an average of 26 hours per month with their families. By 2008, however, that shared time had dropped by more than 30%, to about 18 hours.
The Internet and social networking has brought the global world closer together, but it might have been at the cost of one on one relationships and family.