And if it wasn’t reading, then I’d find something else – the laundry that needed to be folded right now, my desk that needed to be tidied-up this minute. I’d justify the distraction as necessary for ‘research’. ‘Hmmm,’ I said to myself, ‘I really should take a glance at this book’. Sitting at my ancient word processor, my eyes began to peer over to my now-tantalising bookshelf. I convinced myself that, once I banished all the technology from my life, I’d become the disciplined writer and focused father I’d always strived to be. I bought a flip phone, subscribed to a print newspaper, and even purchased a 1990s-era word processor without an internet connection. First, I tried a popular approach: I blamed technology and made a serious attempt at a ‘digital detox’.
To see the seriousness of the problem, look at the sobering statistics on ‘distracted driving’ in the United States.Īfter I abandoned my daughter and our game for an utterly inconsequential email, I realised I needed to deal with my distraction problem. One study in 2014 showed that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a smartphone resting on a table is enough to change the character of their conversation. Still, our present feels different, with the sources of distraction seeming greater in number and more ubiquitous. Go back more than 2,000 years, and Socrates was even criticising the written word, for causing ‘forgetfulness in the learners’ souls’. And before that, it was the telephone, or comic books, or the radio.
Of course, smartphones didn’t invent distraction – they’re just the latest culprit. But there’s a dark side: those same gadgets distract us, often at the moments that matter most. We’re blessed with pocket-sized supercomputers that connect us to anyone and everyone, and a buffet of information. But it’s not just parents, it’s all of us in our interactions with each other. If you’re a parent in the 21st century, I bet you’ve experienced your own version of this. It could have brought us closer together, but I’d just blown the spirit and substance of it big-time. The worst part: before I became distracted, we had been playing a lovely game, telling each other what superpower we most wished for. My brain would be too tempted, I’d feast on it all.Īfter I finished, I looked up and my daughter was gone. No, it wouldn’t take ‘just a second’ no, I didn’t ‘need’ to respond to the email – I’m an author and researcher, and thus rarely receive messages that have a drop-everything-and-answer urgency to them. Only much later could I count the mistakes in that statement. I just need to respond to this one thing,’ I said to my daughter, as I attended to my iPhone.
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