Eng 1113 - Argumentative Essay

Casey 1

Corrie Casey

Greg Pierce

ENG 1113

April 24 2017

        Cell phones and social media has become a huge impact on people these days. We have them everywhere we go, especially the teens. Sometimes, it is like the teens cannot even live without them. When they are with their family, most of them do not even pay attention because they are too busy on their phone. Is it tearing families apart, or is it giving them better communication throughout the home? What is sitting at the table with your family looking like? We need to improve our relationships with our families and get our faces out of the screens of our phones.

        Would you rather sit inside on your phone, or get up, get outside with your family, and go on a walk, or play some sports? The problem with the teens these days, is if they were to answer this question, of course they would say they that they would want to go outside and enjoy some time with ther family, but what do most of them do when it actually comes down to the situation? They sit on their butt, with their face shoved into the screen of their phones. But wait, it is not just the teens. Believe it or not, the parents will be that way!

        Parents are sometimes glued to their smartphones and emails throughout the evening, while children often had computers in their bedroom used to access social networking and games. (http://zeenews.india.com/home/technology-addiction-tearing-families-apart_718677.html) Parents are constantly feeling like they are in more than one place at once while parenting. They are still ‘at work.’ They are keeping up socially. All while trying to cook dinner and attend to their kids. The study involved in-depth interviews with 35 caregivers, including moms, dads and grandmothers. Participants consistently expressed an internal struggle between multitasking mobile technology use, work and children, information overload and emotional tensions around disrupting family routines, such as mealtime. As one mom in a focus group described it, “The whole world is in your lap." (http://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/plugged-parenting-how-parental-smartphone-use-may-affect-kids)

        Distracted parenting is the new distracted driving. It’s parenting while your attention is on something else, such as for instance, your smartphone. Distracted driving, say texting while driving, kills. But guess what? So does distracted parenting. The Wall Street Journal’s Linda Blake and Ben Worthen looked at smart phone statistics during the time the injury rate went up and found that during that same period, the rate of smart phone use among cell phone users went up from 6%-30%. That may not sound like much until you consider that more than half of Americans use mobile phones. During that time, injuries due to playground equipment rose by 17% while injuries due to nursery room equipment went up by 31%. (http://www.kars4kids.org/blog/distracted-parenting-stats-will-get-attention/)