In our WWW connected world, with two incomes, the outrageous anxiety-laden financial strain of the “too big to fail” loan industry crisis, blended families, and multiple cyber streams of media and communication, it is very challenging to give one another undivided attention.
This is the primary source of anxiety for children today, according to Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.
“Today kids deal with parents who are physically close but, mentally elsewhere…They want and need adult attention,” (p. 268) writes Turkle. And this attention is important for validation, i.e. “you matter”, and also so parents can act as “a buffer against the world” (p. 276).
Children are exposed to raw, unedited worldly emotions and things ranging from conspicuous consumption, to bullying, violence, gratuitous sex and drugs. But mainly, they are awash in the “Net” feeling unimportant - or not enough.
According to Turkle, children are craving attention from adults and from even each other. They know that the multi-tasking, text streams of cyber communication that is their primary medium of conversation does not require them to be given attention - the kind of attention paid to an individual who is considered special and worthy of complete focus and putting everything else aside.
Tips for attention management
- Do not always equate more time with more attention.
- Be conscious of whether or not you are giving your child undivided attention.
- Develop teamwork around chores
- Become interested in your child’s media.
- Get “techie” with it. If you are not savvy about social media, find a tech savvy friend to help you set up an account and have your child show you how they use it (Facebook, MySpace, games).
- Designate a time in the evening to turn off cyber technology making family members available for face time.
Parent Resources
- A Parent’s Guide to Cyber Citizenship
- Parenting digital natives with confidence: The Authority In Me
(Ref: 535-e)
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