I was lying on my bed next to my five-month-old while chatting with my husband about a conversation he had had with the older children. The conversation had been on cell-phone usage, and I immediately recalled my list from twelve days ago. I had thought at the time that the list was thorough, but I had forgotten one thing. What else does a child learn while waiting for dinner at a restaurant? Contentment.
Contentment is listening to my husband's voice without being interrupted by a text message alert. It is watching my son's expressive face and hands without wondering, "Who's Twittering now?" But contentment is a stranger to the child with an endless source of entertainment at his/her fingertips. It is a foreign concept to the teenager who can surf the Internet and text with friends in the midst of a class, a car ride, or 'family time'. There is more, always MORE, on those little gadgets to seduce a person away from what is happening in his/her immediate surroundings.
It's sad that people don't realize that what they are looking for on their smart phones is contentment. And of course, they will never find it there.
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