Good evening seat friends of #HiveLearners and readers from all over the Hive communities. It is a pleasure to join this conversation. I hope my quota will be of immense value to you all.
Recently, I attended a teens program, and one of the themes discussed there was the use of phones by young people and how it had made a lot of people lose focus. I will take a cue from that discussion to answer this question.
Phones are a very good device and can be used to our advantage. It has played a very vital role in the development of children and people in general in finding solutions to a lot of problems that would have taken a series of research to solve. The numerous advantages of phones can not be overemphasised. But to be practical and fair, one has to make a sincere reference to this matter.
Phone In Family Gathering
Because of the negative effects of phones on people, they should not be used during family gatherings or events. Sometimes, one may want to take pictures of family gatherings, that may not be a bad idea, but other than that, it should be kept away.
I can tell you for free that phones with diverse attractions and applications have made them the devices that people adore or worship in recent times.
It is also understandable that a new career which is called Attention Engineers has been created or trained to design what will grab the attention of people through their phones, making the phone an idol for many people. As a result, we should not encourage phones during family gatherings except for special reasons.
Continuous Partial Attention (CPA)
Records have shown that people spend more time on their phones than on anything they do daily.
Phones have also produced a new disease which is referred to as Continuous Partial Attention, people will not be able to concentrate whenever their phones are on display and in their hands.
Since phones can lead to distraction, I would like to suggest that phone usage should not be condoned during family gatherings or events. It is that simple. Family is all-encompassing and the totality of everyone's presence should be felt. Without phones, people can get along and share in the fun but phones may not only bring distraction, it could lead to seclusion.
Having said the above one cannot overrule the importance of phones in families like connecting to a relative from a distance. Families should rather set boundaries and learn to observe and respect family norms for the sake of tranquillity.