Family Connections in an Overly "Connected" World

We spent seven straight days without phones, screens, social media, emails or schedules.

We stopped at the brewery to go to a food truck right when we landed back home from OBX and a man who saw me looking after my kids laughed, and jokingly asked what I did in my “free” time.

I smiled and told him that we just got back from a no-screen policy vacation, so I was feeling quite free actually, though it may appear I’m bound.

He was stunned, said what I did took courage, asked if my kids hated me, while his friend went on to say he has a ten year old who’d never give up her phone so I must be really “powerful.”

I’d like to think I give power, rather than take it, and the truth is, my intention from the get-go was to have all of us cash in our phones together, so we could truly “be” together, as a reward, not as some twisted punishment.

I always wanted siblings close in age to me so they could see the same world I saw.

Here is where I see social media separate all of us, not just our youth. It’s so easy for them to be in separated worlds sitting right next to each other.

My kids friends status’ becomes more important to them than the status of their breathing.

How many likes they get becomes more important to them than what “they” actually like or love.

Hand raised, I’ve also been a culprit of all of these same distractions so I know how destructive they are.

In essence, virtual worlds become scarily more real than the real world, and as someone whose work is primarily online, I get the allure, but I also know it’s necessary to tap out, in order to tap in. So I do, often.

This time though, I engaged the kids in the tap.

The first night was a bitch fest, but by the second day, they were broken into island time.

They shared things together, saw the same things in the world right in front of them, not different things in self selected media worlds. The only options for connections were real ones, not “wish-they-were-real” ones.

I didn’t say all of this to the guy at the brewery. All I really said was, “I knew it was needed. I watched my thirteen year old return to herself, watched her confidence grow, saw genuine smiles and shared laughter in ways I haven’t for a long time, so I guess it’s fair to say, though I knew it was needed, I didn’t know quite how much. The proof was in the outcome we came home with.”

He said I should write a book about it. I laughed and told him, I really have nothing to say.

It’s one of those silently understood lessons I know all of us, teenagers and all, will willingly embark on year after year, because it wasn’t only me silently understanding this time.

My kids got to remember the power of family, of spontaneity, of here-ness, of togetherness, not because I had the power to take their phones, but because I gave them the power to give them up, and to see themselves without that kind of media driven world, wherein lies, their truest power.

The power of experiencing what is real, right here, right now, with other people who are experiencing the same world as they are. Which is the only place where true connection is possible.

Here’s the “book” the guy at the brewery told me to write:

We all left with happier hearts, emptier heads, with bellies full of sea food in ocean sprayed, sun kissed, and sand covered bodies, and it may’ve been “tough love,” it may have taken “courage” as the man said, to face the possibility of my kids hating me for taking away their play things, but in the end, I promise you, they loved me more, not for it, but because of it, and I promise you, when they have kids, they will offer them the same gift I’ve offered them this week.

I don’t think it took courage. I think it took promise, and I trusted in the promise I was extending. The promise, came through. This past week will always be a wrapped in time, gift from God with all six of our names written on the label. For this, I’ll always be grateful.