4Moms: How to fight smartphone addiction in your family
Mention the sucking, gravitational pull of the smartphone to a mom and you’ll probably get a strong reaction.
She may admit to being addicted to the phone herself, or she’ll cop to handing it over to the kids to get some quiet time a bit more frequently than she’d like.
Perhaps she has a partner who seems more interested in what is happening on Facebook or Twitter than what is happening around the house, or, if she is the parent of a teenager, she will describe that telltale lap glance at the dinner table that drives her insane.
“You just want to yell, ‘Put it away!’” one mom told me.
But of course, it’s not that easy. You don’t want to start a fight with your spouse, you don’t want to alienate your teen, and sometimes you don’t have the strength to exercise the self-control to look away from the picture of your kids you put on Instagram and just look at your actual kids instead.
So how can you keep the smartphone from interfering with your family life — or get it to interfere a bit less? To find out, I’ll talk to Miti Ampoma, a communications specialist, and author of the book “The Innovative Communicator” on how families can put down the smartphone and start paying more attention to one another — right now, in the present.
The conversation begins at 11 a.m. PDT. Join us then, to ask Ampoma your questions directly. If you can’t catch the conversation live, you can come back to this page any time to see the archived video.
