It has a significant impact on the people around me when I constantly look at my smartphone. During that time, I am essentially not there for those around me: I am physically present, yet mentally in the virtual world, distracted by communication with people who are somewhere else. It is a paradoxical situation: I am physically there, but not present. Adults can adjust to this. It probably leads them to look at their own smartphones as well. The result is a group of people who spend time together, yet neither engage with nor talk to one another: teenagers on the street, at bus stops, friends in cafés, families in restaurants.
But what about the children?
Children learn to know themselves through the way we talk to them, the way we respond to them: we are their mirror, from which they read affection, sympathy, interest in who they are and appreciation. For babies, smaller but also older children, parents who communicate with others via their smartphones several times a day are a major disadvantage.
Children do not understand at all when someone is physically there but mentally absent. When we communicate with others in the presence of our children, when we receive funny, sad, offensive or otherwise very important messages, our faces reveal what we are reading, what the message is doing to us. The children watch us and relate it to themselves. Yet they cannot make any meaningful connection between our reaction and their own reality.
Through this state of mental absence, the child – regardless of age – lacks a caregiver who is emotionally available and attentive, who recognises and responds to the child’s needs. Psychologists and paediatricians warn that mothers are losing their maternal instinct and their feeling for their child. Children who are already able to express themselves have complained in surveys that their parents frequently and for long periods „disappear into the internet.“ They observe their parents‘ behaviour on smartphones and feel that they play too many games, shop online or constantly engage with Facebook contacts.
All children need their parents.
They need parents who are present in order to develop healthily.