Smartphones are ruining family bonds

The problem of excessive use of gadgets is evident in almost all families and it is slowly taking away the happiness of family gathering and outings.

Recently, when we attended a family function, I noticed that it wasn’t like it used to be. There wasn’t the sound of laughter, running children, sharing of jokes and stories or women gossiping in the other room. It was just people glued to their smartphones, either busy messaging people away from them rather then talking to the ones right in front of them , or it was children sitting together and playing on their tablets and if they speak to each other it was about which gadget they own, and what games or features are present in the same.

Nowadays, when people visit each other, it is no longer “Hi, How are you?” Its more “Hi, what’s your WiFi password?” This isn’t confided to gatherings, but also seen in malls, restaurants, universities and other public places. As a family, all of us go to restaurants for recreation but how many times do we actually talk or see each other’s faces? All we do is just sit there and use our phones. Moreover and recently, restaurants have begun to give free WiFi, which encourages the usage of smartphones rather than face-to-face interaction.

When travelling, I happened to see a family of five in the car next to us, surprisingly all of them except the person who was driving were busy on using their gadgets. Gone are the times when people would talk to each other, share stories and people actually looking out of the window to see what’s happening in their surroundings.

While these gadgets have certain benefits too, but at the end, where are they leading us? These gadgets have given us materialistic happiness, but have in return taken away our emotional happiness. Needless to say, these gadgets are not only emotionally tearing us apart, but they are also affecting our health and isolating us from the world. It is about time that we realise how to control the time that we spend on these smart devices.

— The reader is an Indian pupil based in Sharjah