Oct 21 2008
New Study: Cell Phones and the Internet Bringing Families Closer
Just when you were sure that all the time spent texting, emailing, surfing, blogging, chatting, and generally being plugged in was a bad thing, a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has produced some interesting results:
A national survey has found that households with a married couple and minor children are more likely than other household types — such as single adults, homes with unrelated adults, or couples without children to have cell phones and use the internet.
The survey shows that these high rates of technology ownership affect family life. In particular, cell phones allow family members to stay more regularly in touch even when they are not physically together. Moreover, many members of married-with-children households view material online together.
So, technology is connecting families to each other and improving the quality of the family unit. Interesting. Wait, it gets better.
Technology was found to be beneficial for family life, according to the study, since families using the most technology are also more likely to share more moments with family members when they are online.
On the other hand, technology can also kill family time in some cases, as dual-income households have reported less family time, and more work, partly due to the use of internet. They are also less likely to participate in family leisure time or eat family dinner, a percentage that rises with the rate of technology ownership.
However, we can’t ignore the fact that technology enables new ways of communication: 70 percent of couples who both own a cell phone contact each other at least once a day, to say hello or chat, compared to just 54 percent of couples who own just one or no cell phone.
OK. So you have to be careful with too much tech time and put the phone down when you are eating or having leisure time. I’ll buy that. My son will back me up on this one, “Put that phone down at the dinner table!”
If the increased technology time is not coming at the expense of family time, where is it coming from?
The survey also found that the Internet has affected family television viewing habits — one-fourth of respondents reported that they are watching less TV.
Another blow to the networks. We have heard about the evils of watching too much TV forever. Now, it looks like we may be listening. Of course, we are texting while driving, or fumbling with a cell phone in traffic, or stepping off a busy curb while reading email, or being awoken at all hours by an incoming text message, or …
