The article's focus is on the traditional family meal. The article mentions how having a family meal has started to become regarded "an insignificant, old-fashioned ritual." With all the emailing, texting, tv watching, or using a smart phone to browse the web at the dinner table makes it hard to connect over a family meal. Think about the last time you were at a restaurant. How many people were sitting texting while sitting across from another person on a date or around the table out to dinner with the family? In your own home, how many of you sit at the table with your phone in your lap or watch tv as you eat, engaged in the show and not the people you're eating with? These habits have replaced those "old-fashioned" traditional family dinners and because of it, the way we interact with others is changing. The article explains the benefits of having family meals (technology-free) because "it not only strengthens our neural circuitry for human contact (the brain's insula and frontal lobe), but it also helps ease the stress we experience in our daily lives, protecting the medial temporal regions that control emotion and memory." The family meal seems to be the easiest way to escape stress on a daily basis, especially at times when many complain of being unable to relax at the end of the day. Technology has become such a huge part of our lives that the article comments on the fact that it even has an effect on how we have conversations, "conversations at meals sometimes resemble instant messages where family members pop in with comments that have no linear theme. In fact, if there is time to have a family dinner, many family members tend to eat quickly and run back to their own computer, video game, cell phone or other digital activity." Clearly, technology is beginning to effect how we interact with others especially since "family dinners still provide a good setting for children and adolescents to learn basic social skills in conversation, dining etiquette, and basic empathy" which is an important point made by Small in his article.
What I gathered from this is that people give more attention to their gadgets these days and than those who they spend company with. When we are with our friends, we are still texting other people, giving less attention to those who we spend time with. One situation in particular that I witnessed over the summer really stuck out to me. I work at a country club as a server. All of the families obviously are very well off and have the latest up to date "toys." One family of four who are regulars in the country club grille where I work comes in to eat dinner together every Sunday, except I'm not even sure you could considering them "eating together" because they all are sitting at the table on their iPad, iPhone, or staring intently on the televisions we have around the grille. It is so awkward to wait on them because what is supposed to be a family dinner where you'd normally expect a family to interact with each other while spending a meal together, at times they are completely silent, totally engaged in technology. On the flip side there is another family I have had the privilege of waiting on who comes in once a week and insists on sitting in a particular room called the cafe, in order to have their "family time." They bring playing cards or Uno and have a good quality family meal. Not a phone in sight, the meal is not rushed and they all have a wonderful time enjoying each others' company. See the difference? Honestly, I was shocked in both situations. Shocked that a family can actually function by blatantly ignoring each other during a meal and then surprised to see that there are still families that actually make an effort to sit an eat and enjoy each others' company. Why is this important? What does it matter that these families have different ways of "interaction"? Well, according to Small, "the potential negative impact of new technology on the brain depends on its content, duration, and context. To a certain extent, I think that the opportunities for developing the brain's neural networks that control our face-to-face social skills - what many define as our humanity - are being lost or at least compromised, as families become more fractured." The ability to develop social skills and interact with others in person are being affected by how we embrace technology use. Looking forward, this is a huge threat that families need to consider. What I can see from this is that technology is inhibiting our abilities to interact with others on a more intimate level than in years past and in a world where technology has become so important and clearly is going to be increasingly central to how we function in the future, this may have a possible detrimental effect on our families in the future. And not only that but with any kind of relationship of the future--with friends, partners, co-workers.
My question(s) for everyone is how do you see technology effecting your family, if it does at all? What ways, if any, do you and your family try to incorporate regarding technology use? Do you see it as important to limit technology use in your family or in families in general? And lastly, how do you think the children being born into this society will be effected by the increasing trend of technology use? Will they still be able to experience the traditional family meal that is slowly being chipped away or will this be something that they only hear about from those "back in the day" stories that grandma and grandpa tell?
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