Carrie Bickmore knows we are all a little dependent on our devices. Hell, she knows she’s a little dependent on her phone.
So, instead of continuously and mindlessly scrolling, living within the bright lights of her phone screen, she’s decided to do something about it.
In her latest piece for Stellar, the TV journalist said she got quite the wakeup call just recently, when her son said something about her phone use.
“The other night, I settled in for movie night with my son and he protested, ‘No second screening, Mum.’
“I nearly fell out of the bed. How does he know the term ‘second screening’, and why is he telling me? I never do that … do I? Am I that person? I AM that person. Oh god. Those people are the worst.”
Bickmore said after thinking about what it was that annoyed her in particular about her own phone use, and her partner Chris’ phone use, they put some rules in place. To, you know, learn how to interact with humans again.
“It used to annoy [Chris] that I would jump on my phone within a minute of waking up in the morning, so now we don’t check any device for the first half-hour of the day.
“It used to bug me when he’d answer texts through dinner, so now we leave our phones in our bags when we go out, and our conversations have been so much better for it.”
Sounds tempting…but then…so does scrolling.
Top Comments
Phone use in social situations is one of my biggest pet peeves. I've got one friend that likes to use her phone in cinemas (I no longer go to the movies with her), others that constantly check in on their husband and the kids (does this really need to be done every half hour? No wonder your husband won't do stuff around the house with the constant need to check he's doing it right) and others that just find it imperative to scroll through social media during dinner.
It's rude, yet so many people see no issue with it. I bet they would crack it if I pulled out a novel at the table and started only half listening to conversation.
Just last night my partner & I went out for dinner with our 2 children & my nephew (16, 16 & 21) We all had our phones out & were happily showing each other articles, pictures & social media posts that had piqued our interest in the preceding days. These ranged from them all being outraged about women in Saudi not being able to drive, super funny memes we all had a laugh at, childhood suicides, females in sport, the pressure kids deal with because of social media, the growing drug epidemic in Australia, the plebiscite (of course) & a story about dogs that made us all a bit sad & led to us talking about previous family pets then to the kids begging for funny stories from when they were younger. It also came about that we picked up one of their friends after dinner as she had messaged my daughter saying she was upset as she had had an argument with her older brother. The girl's mum was thankful we provided an outlet for both her children at a time she was struggling. Afterwards my partner & I commented on how enjoyable the night had been, how we never had access to such ready media or instant contact with friends growing up & that it was really refreshing for us to realise that these awesome young people of ours had a good grasp on what was going on in their world & that their phone/internet habits were pretty healthy, educational & eye opening. We won't be banning phones at the dinner table :)