Phone-less Parks

I don't know if my sample size is just off or not very good, but one of the things that I've definitely noticed, and appreciate a LOT, is that I see more parents that are NOT on their phones when they are with their kids at a park! This is an incredibly positive change in my opinion!

We know there are so many issues in the world today surrounding the addiction to phones that people have. I'm in a way included in that group, although I would like to think I've been able to control it a little bit more these days by intentionally not being on my phone. There are a lot of people that can't control it though, and it's sad. What makes it the most sad is when their kids are around! Parents who go to a park so they can just unleash their kids to run around and not pay attention to them so they can mess around on their phone are very frustrating!

I saw a meme, as I do so many times and reflect life lessons back to them lol, of one that said "you only get 18 summers until they're grown" and that hit me right in the feels! Each summer that you have with your kids is one less summer before they are a teenager, one less summer before they don't really want to spend much time with you the way they did when they were younger. It all goes by so quickly, and as adults we tend to forget that kids absorb EVERYTHING from their surroundings. One quick glance at us and they see us on our phones, they absorb and register that shit subconsciously! If we bring them to a park and are on our phone the whole time, not paying ANY attention to the kids, they internalize that far more than you would think. That repeated behavior that the parents do, then changes the behavior the kids do over time.

That's an incredibly unfortunate event, and I think now that we've got several years under our belts with the fondle slabs (phones) in our pockets and lots of scientific evidence of the dangers and detriments of it all, people are finally starting to pay attention to it.

We've been going to a number of different parks lately, particularly because the weather is getting really nice and giving us more opportunities to be out there enjoying it, and that means we interact with a lot more people than we do in other places like our obsession with going to farms and stuff hahaha. With that increased interaction with "normal" people, one of the really positive things I did start to notice is that I see a LOT more parents intentionally not on their phones when their kids are playing, and instead watching them go and have fun! It's not all, I still see some parents who will occasionally pull out their phone for a minute or two and check something but they put it away for far longer than they've got it out. That's been a really nice development in my eyes!

There are slow movements in the zeitgeist on things in our culture but I do think that we have the ability to make positive progress, and have been making great progress in the last few years to really change the paradigm in much greater ways than was thought of. We have issues for sure, but I think that we do have a more aware ability of being able to positively effect change on a number of things. Cell phone addiction and usage with parents and their small children is definitely one of those elements! I'm really glad to see where we spend time, that people are not as hopelessly addicted to their phones and are enjoying their kids.

What about you, have you noticed an increase or a decrease in the cell phone usage of parents around kids? Let me know in the comments!