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The BlackBerry Orphans
theodp writes "The WSJ reports that the growing use of email gadgets is spawning a generation of resentful children. In addition to feeling neglected, kids fear BlackBerrys and Treos can put their lives in jeopardy as Mom and Dad type away while driving." From the article: "Like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind school, parents are secretly rebelling against the rules. The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile email from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips before, during and after dinner. The kids 'think I have a small bladder,' she says. She declined to be named because she's afraid her 12- and 13-year-old children might discover her secret."
I'm sure we'll be seeing treatment centers pop up to seperate money from weak-minded individuals.
Quick, someone find this woman and rat her out to her children!
I thought it was the other around.
Hehe, so she thinks her kids are as dumb as teenagers think their parents are?
I just saw a commerical for a blackberry on cnn.com which touted the ability to spend more time with the kids because the antique salesman had one.
She should just pick up a couple copies of WoW for the kiddies. She'd never have to deal with their snotty demands of family time ever again... let alone see them outside of their rooms.
What is wrong with parents these days??? Seems like there are only two kinds: the ones that beat/harm their children and the ones that wish to act like they never had any children! Parent's like these are no better than drug addicted parents who mix meth in their house with their 3month old playing at their feet. Put the gadgets down, talk with your kids, or given them up for adoption.
Space for rent, inquire within
All I can say is I have much bigger problems to worry about than the rationale of that woman.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
People seem to think that if you have a kid or reach a certain age it entitles you to have no responsibility. They shout "I am MATURE, I can do whatever I want". Reminds me of the teenagers I work with, whining and pouting about how they know best and don't need to follow rules.
If you are going to be a parent, lead by example. You want your kids to be independent thinkers, then YOU be one. You want your kids to follow rules, YOU follow the rules. I can tell you firsthand with the kids I do volunteer work with that they are very tired of hypocritical parents.
I understand we live in a fast paced world now, but just like your clients, you have to scedule time for your family as well. How many of the blackberry addicts would answer their blackberry if they were with an important customer? What are you saying about your family when you don't extend them the same respect?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I use the CrackBerry in the bathroom, or when I need to run downstairs to get a soda, or go out to the garage to "get something". I have hit the maximum field limit on emails while driving.
I have, though, found that typing, turning a corner, and shifting (I have a manual transmission, for the youngsters who don't know what that means) all at the same time is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
When we visit the inlaws I hide in the guest bedroom to use the crack.
I can stop anytime.
I do NOT have a problem.
I think that's rubbish, there's no way a kid under the age of 15 would spot the danger of talking on a cellphone while driving unless it was explained to him/her by their parents althought I don't see a good reason to at that age.
As for the parents sneaking away during dinner to use their blackberry's.. hmm, a little childish (pun intended) for sure and clearly shows where their priorities are placed. I doubt there's anything that urgant that comes in to your blackberry not to be able to put it away for another hour or so untill after you are done dinner with your family. Granted, you may be a doctor or surgeon who's on-call, but then again those type of calls wouldn't happen often enough to warrant the kids to complain about lack of attention (at least I hope they don't).
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The WSJ reports that the growing use of email gadgets is spawning a generation of resentful children.
I wouldn't point the finger at the email gadgets per se. It seems more likely that nanny-state lazy parenting is to blame.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Precedent:
1. Parents and teachers discipline children.
2. Parents stop and get mad at teachers.
3. Everyone stops disciplining children.
Extrapolation:
1. Parents get mad at kids for ignoring them in favor of games and cell phones.
2. Parents ignore kids in favor of games and cell phones.
3. Families completely ignore each other and focus on entertainment.
Hey, worse things have happened.
Buy the kids their own Blackberrys.
Examples abound. I doubt this is spawning a 'generation' of resentful children, especially since children with good parents always resent them, at least until they don't. I also have doubts about how large the actual crackberry population is, but shh, don't tell them, they might realize how important they actually are.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."
No. No, no emails are important enough to look at en route. Period.
Get a life, and pay more attention to things around you instead of work. There's a whole world outside, and your kids mental well being is more important than your job no matter what you might think.
Huh? The interesting thing isn't about technology, its about parenting styles. When I was a teenager, if I tried to impose rules like this on my parents (regardless of the technology involved), they'd tell me that I could make the rules when I was working and paying the bills and they were living off me.
They'd usually accompany it with discussion of the issue and why they needed or wanted to do whatever it was I wanted them not to do, and might try to find some way to address the issue I was having that made me want to impose the rule. Or they might not. Depending on the circumstances.
But they wouldn't let me pretend I was running the family, and then sneak around to evade my "rules". And, IMO, that's a good thing.
"Avoiding conflict" is not the same as "parenting".
I love non-sequitir Subject lines. (And random caps as well) So, I'm a dad. My two year old sees me about two hours a night: after work (6:00PM) and before her bedtime (8:00PM). On weekends she has my full attention except for during her nap which is about an hour and half. In other words I give her as much time as I can. And I still find time to e-mail, post on various forums, compose original music, make movies, work on my photography hobby, work on a variety of computer projects, etc... My wife, a stay at home mom, is with our daughter a lot more than I am by virtue of the fact that she stays at home. So she's DYING for her own time. Our daughter has accepted that if my wife wants to check mail (just standard mail on a laptop, not a crackberry), she should busy herself with something else. Of course within reason. My wife is VERY attentive to our daughter. At the same time if I even make a motion to go anywhere NEAR a computer my daughter starts wailing. She has already somehow intuited that a computer + daddy can sometimes mean a long period of time where I'm not available. Even though I've never really put her through anything like that. I've had work situations where I've had to spend maybe an hour or two on the weekend working on something, but it's been infrequent. So I think kids definitely can deal with it. In reality the black berry is no different from a regular phone. Generations of kids survived mom's gossiping on the kitchen phone in the past. This is not going to be a huge tragedy. Honestly, do any of you resent the time your mom's spent on the phone when you were young?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
ought not to be parents.
keep on trading your childrens' happiness for a few dollar bills. i'd rather sleep in the gutter, addicted to heroin, than have a crackberry habit like these stupid assholes.
"Seems like there are only two kinds: the ones that beat/harm their children and the ones that wish to act like they never had any children!"
Well for the most part these are just the ones you hear about.
There is another issue. Modern culture doesn't place any real value on parenting. If a woman wants too be a stay at home mother she is often looked down on. If a man doesn't want to work on a Saturday to spend time with his kids then he isn't a "team player".
Of course you are supposed to "fit in" being a good parent but heaven forbid you decide that you should give up something or make that a higher priority than work or "personal time".
The good thing is a lot of people ignore culture and do the right thing anyway, you just never hear about them.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This just in: parents in the "Me Generation" are putting themselves before their kids/families/significant others!
Seriously, the woman in this article makes me sick. I know she's an "executive", but you know what? You're not that fscking important. I'd even wager that her company's stock price will stay about the same the following day even if she doesn't send that last e-mail before dessert. Lady, sit the fsck down and eat your dinner.
The third kind of parents are the ones that make up the vast majority. We spend a great deal of time with our families, and enjoy doing so. There's just no headline in that.
Honestly, this makes me sick. Somehow, work has crept into the home life and taken a strangle hold over it. For heaven's sake people, leave work at work. For me, anyhow, providing for my family is the reason I go to work in the first place.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
Do these people really need to be "on call" the whole day? I just wait until I get into work to check email.
Sometimes I get bored riding the Metro in DC, so I play a game of "count the Blackberrys". 1 point for each Blackberry, 2 if it's being used to send mail, and 10 points if it's used as a phone. It's nice being a contractor and just leaving work AT WORK.
With my Significant Other we communicate a lot that way... and text messages... all day...
Last month I had over 3000 text messages on my bill. I use that, email and text messages more than phone. Sometime it is very convenient to talk discretely... like in a theater or with some friends/people when we do not want to be heard... I/we use it for everything... It is so convenient. I need directions? I fire up google/google map on it. Check movie times? weather? Hey, it is great on such a small phone!
the real problem is that these stupid people are giving their whole lives to their employers.
Something I've slowly realized as a parent is this - "You are always setting an example for your kids." Whether you like it or not, 24/7, wherever you go, whatever you do, if your kids are there you are setting an example. Whether it's a good example or a bad example is up to you. But, "do as I say, not as I do" is not going to work.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
I have never seen one, but it is just frickin' email right?
I mean ya, it's cool you can get it wireless and send email wirelessly, but it is still email.
I think there is something more to this, some emptyness in people's lives that make them need to get some sort of external validation from people going on here. Like those sad folks that live in chat rooms hoping someone will like them. Or is it a work addiction because it is work related emails they are sending/receiving?
I am not trying to be critical, I am really just trying to understand why people get addicted to email or IM basically, which is what I think these things are, unless I am missing something never having seen one.
I personally love to get away from my email at any cost, while I don't like to be disconnected from the internet for too long, it isn't because of the email/IM, it is because I like reading the news and such and feel out of touch with current events if I don't spend at least a few hours everyday online reading.
Let me know if I am totally missing what these things are besides email machines.
Wax on, wax off baby!
I was recently trying to get into a free, yet exclusive alternative to public high school (not some ritzy joint... my family's not loaded) and my mom and I needed to go for an interview in an area of town that I've never been to before.. My mom got directions off of Mapquest (first mistake) and while we were trying to get to this meeting on time, my mom thought that I had misread the directions, so I lost my job as navigator. After about 500 feet of my mom navigating, her cell phone rang -- it was her friend/business partner. They spoke for about 15 minutes and my mom hung up. "Are we going the right way?" she asked, as if I have lived in the area for all my life. "I don't know, you took the directions." "Well... are we?" "Mom. I. Don't. Know. You. Have. The. Directions."
Several turn arounds, arguments and snatching of the directions later, we found our way to the place we needed to be.
If anyone cares, it turns out that the school wasn't too exclusive, and I did get in.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
...because it diverts too much attention away from my Nintendo DS
The part of this I know to be true is the "ignoring your kids" factor; my wife's job has developed the need to have her on CrackBerry duty 24/7, and when she's mailing or reading mails, neither I nor our twins can get through to her.
Having said that, she's a terrific and devoted mom otherwise, and we're working it out -- she just imposed a limit on herself that, from the time she gets home from work to the time the kids go to bed, the CrackBerry is off.
It is perfectly possible to have gadgets like this, and not be attached to them. I have a smart phone since my work got one for me, with a data plan and so on. However it's not even set up to check my e-mail. Why? I just don't care. I check e-mail from 8-5, after that I'm on my own time. Either it's a critical problem that rates a phone call or it can wait until tomorrow. I don't have a family, I'm not married, it's just I am realistic about how important things are and I don't like my time being intruded upon. Having the device doesn't necessitate that I am glued to it all the time. It's just a nice cell phone that I can surf the net on when I want.
"kids fear BlackBerrys and Treos can put their lives in jeopardy as Mom and Dad type away while driving."
BlackBerry tapping causes car-crunching chain reaction on I-5
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
I just ignored my kids for 10 minutes to read this thread!
Two words:
"MOM!! BATHROOM!!!"
(shudder)
PS:
YouTube Link if you havent seen that South Park episode
A Human Right
MSNBC: Millions of kids have good day at school, don't shoot anyone. It's true what they said in Superman Returns. Three things sell papers: Tragedy, sex, and Superman. We don't have Superman, though, so change that to politics.
I've always heard that the blackberry was addicting, which was why I was worried when my dad got one for his work. It hasn't been a problem, though. It makes a buzzing sound whenever he gets an email, and I hear it fairly often at dinner (and yea, we actually eat dinner together, 9/10 times). He doesn't answer it... he usually doesn't even look at it until the next morning. The easy way to do that is to remind people that it is just e-mail. E-mail != instant message. E-mail can wait for a response.
My dad manages IT for a small chain of banks, so sometimes he really is needed for something. If something important happens (usually an alarm going off, once or twice armed robbery...) then they'll call him. I rather suspect that this is true for *anyone.* If they really need a fast response they'll call - doesn't the blackberry itself offer voice service?
Perhaps it is something about my family... I never check my email more then once a day, either. People seem confused when I tell them I hadn't yet gotten their email 12 hours after they sent it. I have a cell phone - if it is important they'll call me.
How anyone can find themselves addicted to checking email or a blackberry is still beyond me. Then again what annoys me even more is a phone in a store... lets say you walk into a store for two reasons, to buy something and to ask if they'll be open on a minor holiday. You wait in a line, and when you get to the front you pay, then start to ask your question... and the phone rings. This person also asks if they'll be open for this minor holiday, but despite the fact that you bothered to come in, and just gave them money, they will always talk to the person on the phone first. What happened to the "hold" button? People are so addicted to instant communication these days that the person right in front of them gets shunted to the side.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
That might very well be the case. There are things my parents do/did that I don't/didn't. However, you never know what your kids will pick up on. So as a parent you have to be on your best behavior at all times, because once the kid picks up on it, it may be a while and hard to reverse. Waiting for your kids' bad behavior before you change yours means you've waited too long.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
I suppose kids aren't reading this, but if you are, smash your parent's blackberry. Blackberries are expensive. They might get another one, but after you smash three or four, they won't get more. If their blackberries are issued by their employer, your parent will be fired after you smash two or three. Again, problem solved. Don't be afraid. Your parent my yell at you, make scary faces and noises, and send you to your room. But that's attention, and any attention is better than none. And they'll get over it an a day or two and love you again, without a blackberry.
You have teenagers and college students addicted to cellphones and IM.
I wouldn't point the finger at the email gadgets per se. It seems more likely that nanny-state lazy parenting is to blame.
Or maybe, just maybe, it is businesses and corporations that think a salary is an excuse to reach into our entire lives.
Employers now expect to be able to control who we work for after we're laid off, fired, or quit. They expect to control who we work for once we leave the premises. Many expect to have a cell phone number to reach us at, at a bare minimum, if there's an "emergency."
Used to be that if you worked for Joe's Widgets and Joe wasn't treating you right, and Dave's Dodads offered you a better wage- fuck Joe and the horse he rode in on, you said "Sorry Joe" and went to work for Dave. Non-compete agreement? In a capitalist economy in a representative government? What the fuck? Back in the 50's, if you tried to get someone to sign a non-compete agreement telling them they couldn't work for a competitor for a year, that person would have walked right out the door. Used to be you could talk about your kids and it impressed your boss that you were a family man- not that it made your boss think, "shit, that means he'll be staying home for runny noses and wanting time off for their soccer games."
Used to be if a client said "hey, I know it's 10PM there, but I need this answered now" and someone would say, "I'm sorry, we do not conduct business this late." Now it's "sure, let me call Jane." Used to be that companies paid you for your talents, not that you were put on the planet for your employer and given a salary as a courtesy.
I had an employer call me once while I was asleep. I made it very clear I HAD in fact been asleep; I didn't need to say anything more than "I was asleep when you called." Didn't happen again. You gotta draw lines. If you don't, corporations will just continue eating into your life. Push back to the extent you think you have the power to do so, even if it's slight- just like they chipped away. Update your resume and start sending it out again. Network. When you interview, pay close attention to the kind of business, and try to get the precise commitment nailed down without looking too inflexible.
Go for a position where you can demonstrate a well-above-average capacity so that your boss -doesn't- complain when you didn't answer the phone last night, or comes to your defense when the exec's secretary bitches that you weren't fast enough fixing that email account. "That was Joe. We had a major emergency this morning, which he handled very well, but he wasn't able to get to that email account until after he was done. Joe is a very qualified employee who does top-notch work at an agreeable salary" is a powerful response to "Hey, who was responsible for my secretary not having email for 2 hours?" I wish more managers would realize that's the better response compared to hanging the employee out to dry and promising to "speak to them" about it.
I've found so many people misunderstand why execs mention problems they hear about. Half the time a complaint isn't actually a serious complaint, but a probe to see if this minor bump in the road is indicative of larger problems- and hence if your manager values you and comes to your defense, or hangs you out to dry. Sometimes if your manager really values you, coming up on upper management's radar might not be a bad thing. Like, maybe the next comment is, "glad to hear he's an asset, make sure his next performance report crosses my desk and I'll see about his compensation. I want to keep him." Or "hmm, so he does great work, eh? Would he be qualified for (insert next rung on The Ladder) over in Department X? We need a good person for that."
Please help metamoderate.
...for Home Faraday Cage kits, marketed to upscale teens and pre-teens.
Try to move their addiction to another type of consumer electonics: Get the parent a high-quality digital camera and a place online to put their photos.
A friend of mine who is into photography takes his son nearly everywhere, and never stops taking photos of him. Mind you, it's the camera that's around his neck 24/7, not his son (and new daughter).
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I have a blackberry and don't do a lot of this crap. I turned off all notifications for incoming mail, except true emergency messages (server outages). This pretty much keeps me from checking the thing all the time. Although I'm an e-mail junkie at work, i only check the blackberry outside of work a couple of times.
Anybody foolish enough to text message while driving should have their driver's licence suspended. That's just too dumb.
The latest problem I've seen is people crossing streets on foot while looking at cell phone screens.
There are some real user interface issues here. Aircraft cockpit designers worry about "head down time", time the pilot is looking down at some panel instead of looking out the window. Some car designers have no clue in that area, leading to interfaces which require watching the panel when using the controls. BMW's "i-drive" was notorious for this problem.
Cell phones for cars should be fully hands free and entirely voice activated. That's available; it's just not universal.
One little detail that helps - mobile devices, including cell phones, should not time out on input. The user should be free to stop input at any time to take on a higher priority task, like collision avoidance, without losing work.
They wouldn't call it "crackberry" for nothing. Actually this like any addiction where you need know you have a problem before you can fix it. Crackberry...er Blackberry Anonymous.
Isn't strange that the parents are now the problem. Maybe we can ground the parents without any email contact for a week that would teach them.
Don't have children
God, I hate these obnoxious "trend" stories in the Wall Steet Journal and the New York Times. They're always designed to inflate the reader's ego. Some evergreen "trends": it' getting harder to get into the right preschool, it's hard to get into the right co-op in Manhattan, $100,000 weddings are becoming the norm, prenatal preparation for the SAT is becoming the norm, etc. etc. You're supposed to develop some sort of tribal identity around these problems.
So here we have the Blackberry. Ooh, ooh, that's me! I have a Blackberry! I have a Blackberry and I live in New York! I'm busy and important too!
But what's the real news here? People who place a high priority on their work have trouble balancing work with family. Big frickin' deal. What's the evidence that a generation of "Blackberry orphans" is emerging? Zero. It's all anecdotal--designed to make you feel like you must be important because you have a Blackberry. I suppose it's also there so the reporter can let it slip that he knows the creator of Entourage.
What really galls me is that someone got paid to write this shit. It's so, so easy. Make up a trend, call your friends for some quotes, get a quote from one "expert" from your Rolodex. It's like this:
Trend: Farting in elevators
Quote 1: I was in an elevator when someone farted once.
Quote 2: Me too!
Expert: We're seeing a lot of people farting in elevators as Mexican food has become chic in upscale, Manhattan neighborhoods.
Quote 3: Yeah, farting in elevators is definitely a trend I've been noticing.
With any luck, if you apply this formula, you'll done with your article by lunchtime. Bad reporter! Go out and find some real news. There are millions of people who would kill to be a reporter at the Wall Street Journal (disgruntled journalism major, here) so go out and earn your place at this respected newspaper! Do your damn job, and stop phoning it in!
"Mommy, can you take me to the Pizza Parlor on Saturday?"
"Let me check my email, Billy, to make sure that I don't have a client coming in that day, and would need to get my treo to check my schedule, and I need to call my boss to get approval...."
If you don't have the inclination or the time for your kids, then you have given up parenting.
This is sickening, and I see it more and more.
I'm busy, and I don't have as much time as I would like to spend with my daughter. But when I do devote time to her, there are no cell phones, no computers, and as few distractions as possible.
I think it's also exempletive of how Americans put their careers before their families. I would prefer to know that my daughter loved me and respected me than to be rich and powerful. But I'm just some child-of-a-hippy living in california....
Wage slavery is not illegal. If a person is living paycheck to paycheck, and two weeks of unemployment will render them homeless (and once unshaven, urine-drenched, and freezing on the streets with boogers dripping from their nose, it'd be impossible to get a job) then they pretty much have to lick their boss's boots if told to. The only insurance such people have is working 2 or 3 jobs so it'd be statistically unlikely to lose all jobs within the same 2-week window of time. Of course, unlikely doesn't mean improbable. (Think RAID with really, really, low-end HDs known to crash once every 4 months) If a boss ever discovered that their wage-slave lost his/her other 2 jobs and you're their meal-ticket, the boss can pretty much abuse the poor sap in any fashion.
That said, no one reading slashdot is on the verge of being destitute. We're all mostly middle-class, with some variance between lower and upper middle classes, and perhaps a few lucky ones who are truly upper class. For us slashdotters, with parents bankrolling college, 401k accounts happily growing at a pace of 15% or more, a livable salary with enough to spend on the occasional luxuries like a PS3, then, yes, we're not slaves. We can quit and take five months if necessary to find a nice new job and would, at most, have to sacrifice that PS3 and maybe watch old TV movies instead of heading out to theaters, diet on home-cooked meals rather than eating out, and mow the lawn and shovel the snow without paid help.
My bet is that anyone with a Blackberry fits, at the very least, in the lower-middle-class rung and has other job options.
My 2 cents,
thoreaulylazy
(this is not a sig, I'm not retarded to post anonymously with my real sig or real moniker)
Her kids just tell her they think she has a small bladder. They actually think she has a coke problem.
Ok, maybe its just me being traditional here; But if she's letting her kids dictate to her like that she has bigger problems than a 'small bladder'.
More like:
:-)
Re: I left a bomb in your car.
It's set to go off in about 10 seconds, FYI.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
We clearly need a way to be able to safely peruse the web while driving. Something like a heads up display, a monocle display or text to speech/voice control. Any ideas?
This is why I don't have children. All the people in my life that I care about can get by without me for a day, even my wife. When you have children, however, that's simply no longer the case, and I don't have it in me to care for someone 24/7.
Yes, I'm selfish, but I realize that, and I'm not going to bring someone else into the world who will be hurt by it. At least I'll probably grow out of it before my parents need me to care for them.
Somehow, I don't feel like people flipping burgers at McDonalds are the kind of people who use BlackBerrys and such, thus its not quite relevent, thus I ask: What kind of job pays so low that you're living paycheck to paycheck, yet requires you to have a blackberry that you need to check any instant? 100% curiosity, im sure there is one.
That being said, I realise the quoted part was more generic and an answer to a post that wasn't directly related to the BlackBerry addiction, but since its the topic, I'm curious...
I'm feeling a bit offended by the frequent mentioning of recent tech gadgets. It comes across as advertising, especially when the "news" article is as meaningless as this one. It seems it doesn't matter what the story is about, as long as "iPod", "Wii", "BlackBerry" or "Zune" (even when constantly booing) are mentioned.
How about this suggestion, Slashdot Admins: instead of being afraid you're not getting enough news for the day, why don't you prevent this site from becoming a hive for viral marketing campaigns? Thank you very much.
Do not trust this signature.
Hey, when the kids have their eyes riveted to the screen of their Gameboys, _their_ thumbs a blur on the keys, and all you get in response to a question or a request is a one-shouldered 'so quit bugging me already' shrug, what's a parent to do? After all, the trend spotters always telling us that tech adoption and tech culture comes from the young ...
mod parent up 1 for use of the word 'thus'. :-)