Notes

Family Tasking After conducting an intensive four-year study of family dynamics, UCLA anthropologist Elinor Ochs noticed that multitasking has dramatically affected modern family dynamics, especially when compared to a similar study conducted twenty years ago. From Time magazine’s report: “One of the things Ochs’ team of observers looks at is what happens at the end of the workday when parents and kids reunite—and what doesn’t happen, as in the case of the Coxes. ‘We saw that when the working parent comes through the door, the other spouse and the kids are so absorbed by what they’re doing that they don’t give the arriving parent the time of day,’ says Ochs. The returning parent, generally the father, was greeted only about a third of the time, usually with a perfunctory ‘Hi.’‘About half the time the kids ignored him or didn’t stop what they were doing, multitasking and monitoring their various electronic gadgets,’ she says. “‘We also saw how difficult it was for parents to penetrate the child’s universe. We have so many videotapes of parents actually backing away, retreating from kids who are absorbed by whatever they’re doing.’”14

Jantz, Gregory L. (2012-05-01). Hooked: The Pitfalls of Media, Technology and Social Networking (p. 46). Charisma House. Kindle Edition.