Mobile Competition

A third of New Zealand children, questioned on behalf of an online security company as part of a worldwide survey, feel they compete with their parents’ smartphones for attention. The children report that their parents seem to spend equal, or more time, on their devices than with the kids themselves.

It is easy to get lost in cyberspace once you start checking a ‘quick’ work email or replying to a comment on Facebook. Parents themselves can also feel they have lost their children to tablets and other devices, when conversation degenerates into grunts and mumbles.

Over half of the children in the survey said they feel their parents check their devices too often and some 40% say their parents have become distracted by their device during a conversation.

When the parents were subsequently questioned, half of them agreed that they used devices too frequently and worried about the message they were sending their children.

The results are though provoking. Work styles have changed dramatically since the arrival of laptops and smartphones. Rarely do people come home from work and ‘switch off.’ While there is an upside to the technology, theoretically making it possible to work from anywhere, and spend more time with family, the reality is that work is now often a 24 hour contact proposition.

Brazilians topped the world’s device use, and more than half of their children said they would confiscate their parents device if they could. In New Zealand, that number was 45%.

“With our kids picking up mobile devices at an increasingly younger age, it is really important that we set good habits within the home early on,” said Michael McKinnon, Security Awareness Director at AVG Technologies, the company which undertook the research. “Children take their cues from us for everything else, so it is only natural that they should do the same with device use. It can be hard to step away from your device at home, but with a third of parents telling us that they wished their child used their device less,  they need to lead by example and consider how their behaviour might be making their child feel.”

Does this strike a chord with you? A quick scan around a cafe on a Saturday morning will see a large number of couples or families sitting together, but hardly interacting. Far too many are off in their own little digital world. Eyes up people! Be unavailable for the outside world for an hour at a time and devote that to your family. It will be a pleasure, and a discipline!