Hi-tech at the dinner table replaces phone in the hall

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There was a time when the family phone was treated with such importance that it invariably had its own table in the hall.

The more parsimonious of parents opted for the coin box choice – which inevitably meant a perennial search for two tuppences so you could make a call – but most settled for a spot inside the front door so even the neighbours would know you were a person of substance with your own family phone.

Sometimes this table for the phone even had its own seat so that you could talk in some comfort.

But then ostentation become old hat and instead of a table blocking up half the small hall, you had your phone mounted on the wall with an extra-long flex so that you could wander aimlessly while talking until you – or the child or the dog – tripped over the wire to abruptly end the conversion.

The common link was that the phone was somewhere you went as much as it was something you used; the phone rang, you ran, you closed the kitchen door so you could hear in the hall, and when you were finished you returned with news to the bosom of your family.

Now everyone has a phone – and they don’t have to stir from their seat to answer it.

Of course it’s not really a phone at all anymore; it’s a games zone, a small television, a music box, a radio, a camera, a text machine . . . all rolled into a small device you can store in your pocket.

The problem is that mobility has meant the phone now dominates family life a lot more than it ever did when it was rigidly stuck to the wall or the hall.

Meals are spooned into you with one hand while the other texts someone about heading out in an hour; conversation is replaced by YouTube videos for one; laughter is not caused by chat at the table – it’s a meme of a kitten inadvertently flushing itself down the jacks.

Recent research from Dolmio – admittedly a food company with something of a vested interest in dinnertime – found that two-thirds of parents felt that ‘technology has a negative impact on dinner time at home with the family’.

And almost half of Irish families feel like they have no way of stopping tech at the table – hardly surprising given that the survey also found that there is now an average of twelve internet connected gadgets/devices per household.

Think about that – a dozen devices when the average family is four. So everyone has a phone and everyone has a table and then there’s a Playstation or two for good measure.

To be honest, it’s not just conversation that has gone out of fashion at mealtime – it’s the table itself.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.