Every time we confront a new realm of technology we’re unable to multitask with -- like tablet or mobile computing -- we seek to conquer it, with new apps. Multitasking not only bridges time and space, it allows us to multiply ourselves ... to be in more than two “screens” at once.
Such technology allows us to conquer distance, enabling people to communicate further and faster than any previous time in history. But divorce creates an insurmountable space -- not just distance -- between parents and children that doesn’t fit the brevity and celerity of the mediums we use to communicate.
Here’s the catch for children of divorce: They may be used to competing against a clock, but a smartphone is a far worthier adversary. Not only do we (I too am a child of divorce) have to compete for attention across distance and time, but that time is compressed by technology. Time, in other words, shrinks.
We understand that tech is both a blessing and a curse, yet we fail to apply that understanding to the complexities of divorce. This isn't just a so-called first world problem; there is a real impact to consider here.
#### Arabella Watters
##### About
Arabella Watters is spending the next four months in Ho Chi Minh City, researching the effects of the Vietnam War on the natural environment and ecology of Vietnam. She is at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Children of divorce -- specifically those ages three to five years old -- are far more likely to form insecure attachments, according to a study released in June by the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. Matthew Stevenson, a PhD candidate at Arizona State University who is currently researching father-child relationships post-divorce, has also observed that parents relocating over an hour away after a divorce increases the risk factors for psychological disorders commonly associated with divorce.
Taken together, these findings make genuine communication even more important.
The ability to simulate human experience through sparkling screens can indeed shrink distance instead of expanding it. While there is no substitute for physical interaction, telecommunication can alleviate insecure attachments and bridge the gaps between children and non-custodial parents from far away. In fact, the use of apps like Skype and Facetime with children as early as the age of one by the noncustodial parent can provide intimacy and natural connection, as a 2012 study conducted at Harvard Medical School found.
However, mobile users also check their smartphones an average of one-hundred fifty times a day -- or every six and a half minutes -- as reported by Tomi Ahonen, in a study commissioned by Nokia this year. Every one of those faces lit by the unromantic light of glowing screens is already losing time to experience direct contact. But for children of divorced parents, those minutes are ticking down in a metronome between Mom, Dad, Mom, Dad.
Time is especially salient and measured for children of divorce because it is quantifiably split: one week on, one week off; this weekend not that one; Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving. These aren’t arbitrary decisions but specific chunks of time neatly wrapped up in a custody agreement.
For children of divorce, therefore, the intersection between time lost staring at devices and time lost with parents is particularly poignant. Especially in a culture and country like ours that glorifies the act of multitasking.
Dr. Clifford Nass, an expert on the effects of multitasking on cognitive control and the director of the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media Lab at Stanford University, believes that the generally observed detrimental effects of technology on cognition and information processing can be applied specifically to parental relationships with children: “If you’re interacting with a child, not looking them in the eye, not listening to what they’re saying, there is an enormous negative impact.”
“For kids, they don’t evolve, they don’t learn the skills of understanding emotions if someone is multitasking and not paying attention," Nass notes. “You have to pay attention to learn, and if a child doesn’t have the full attention of the parents, that’s a problem.”
The effects of divorce on children can be subjective, with countless variables at play. Instability, however, is a constant. Divorce thus remains the highest risk factor for psychological disorders and resulting behaviors such as drug usage, sexual promiscuity, and poor performance in school. The likelihood for these behaviors increases two to four times after a divorce, notes Stevenson, who coauthored a paper on the topic. He also emphasizes that it is quality -- not quantity -- of time with children that matters. As a distractor, technology is an obvious detriment to that quality.
My parents divorced over a decade ago. It was a time when we could replace the compulsion of scanning through Instagram-Twitter-Facebook and talking over Skype with the antiquated reach of photo albums, letters, and landlines. In the direct aftermath of my parents’ divorce, communications were tangible and concrete; they lacked the concision of texting, the sterility of email.
But communication now lacks authenticity. A text message, though instant, can also be a cleverly disguised copout for connecting. For children of divorce, that’s an especially loaded signal.
Sometimes only time spent physically removed from our devices renders us incapable of indulging the impulse to check on just one more thing. When I spent time with my parents this summer, we relished the wholeness of our relationships: My mother and I found the Pacific tucked behind the nostalgic haze of San Francisco fog; my father and I hiked until the August sun burned our skin. Our phones remained quiet.
That silence is not an everyday luxury for children of divorce, or anyone else for that matter. It's not that we aren’t inclined to participate in the world, but that there's less opportunity to do so because remaining in sync with our devices isn’t even a conscious choice anymore. It's an automatic habit, one that has real consequences -- especially for divorced children -- and that allows time to all too quickly shrink beneath our constantly clicking fingertips.
Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90
