21st Century Family

“Parents and children might rush through their days in different directions, but the American family is as tight-knit as in the last generation — or more so — because of the widespread use of cellphones and the Internet, according to a new poll.

In what was described as the first detailed survey of its kind, released yesterday, researchers reported that family life has not been weakened, as many had feared, by new technology. Rather, families have compensated for the stress and hurry of modern life with cellphone calls, e-mail and text messages and other new forms of communication.

“There had been some fears that the Internet had been taking people away from each other,” said Barry Wellman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto and one of the authors of the report, published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “We found just the opposite.”

Link to Washington Post Article: Read More

I’ll try to get into a critique on modern social science research in another post (don’t know if anyone reading these would enjoy that or not?). There is no doubt that technology is good in many ways. Technology allows us to communicate in a variety of ways with people we love and opens up new avenues for us that were not possible in the past. However, I’m always very wary of research that quotes a recent finding with a real test from within history. To present an overly simplified conclusion that “we found just the opposite” with regard to the Internet further pulling people away from each other is overly simplistic. Why? Because we are primarily holding this up in contrast to recent time periods with equal or greater disconnectedness?  There is no way I can do justice to this argument in a short post but if people ask for it I’ll do a deeper dive. The bottom line is the quote above mentions “compensating for the stress and hurry of modern life….” and technology as the antidote or band-aid to fix the problem. After reading the above article I’m completely in agreement that technology can help bring families together in some ways to compensate for some systemic relational dysfunction inherent in today’s modern culture. However, I’m totally not in agreement with presenting a misleading conclusion that does not do a deeper dive (mentioned above) into some of the other issues at hand. What do you think?

Encouragement: Take a look at your family and decide if technology is “bringing your family together” and then ask the question “how and why?” Are there other options to strengthen your family you can take? If not, what is the best combination of technology use and face to face interpersonal time?