BOSTON — This holiday season, families are shutting off their phones and electronics to concentrate on giving one another new phones and electronics.
“We have a rule at Christmas: no phone, no television, no computer,” said Debra Porter, mother of three from Boston, Massachusetts. “December 25th is not the day for my son’s face to be buried in his iPhone 4, detached and distracted when I give him his iPhone 5.”
Results from a Newslo poll show that 92% of our readers follow a similar rule as Porter during the holidays. According to family therapist, Dr. Stacy Faber, this is common. Dr. Faber says people use the holidays to reconnect.
“This season is about showing one another we care,” said Dr. Faber. “It’s not about having one eye on your television while you’re talking to your loved one. It’s about having one eye looking past your old television to a gorgeously wrapped new television and caring enough to wait before you rip that sucker open.”
Over the past few years, American researchers have agreed that social interactions and familial relationships have suffered due to the rise of electronic dependency and the short release time between products being updated. Faber believes holiday time is when we get a glimpse of “how it used to be.”
“From Thanksgiving to New Christmas, you can count on families coming together, gathering around a delicious meal and sharing stories from the past year,” said Dr. Faber. “And right after that meal, the entire family becomes mute again, the only sounds coming from the new Kindle Fire, Microsoft Surface, Wii U, Apple iPod Touch, Samsung Chromebook, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”
