In fact, if you're part of a typical family of the '90s, your typical day includes some of the following elements: waking up to the radio alarm...catching the news on the kitchen television while swallowing breakfast...confirming appointments via car phone or listening to traffic reports on the radio while commuting to work...piping music directly to your eardrums via headphones while riding the school bus...using a computer in some capacity on the job or in the classroom...checking your answering machine as soon as you get to work or home...settling down in front of a television set for a few hours and/or connecting to the Internet or an online service...and falling asleep again to the sound of a radio that will eventually shut itself off.
Harmful possibilities
Clinical psychologist Mary Pipher wouldn't argue that any one of these technological devices -- with the possible exception of television -- is primarily harmful. But, with 20 years of experience as a family therapist, she worries about their cumulative effect.
Pipher is author of the best-seller, "Reviving Ophelia," in which she writes about the destructive influences of media and culture on girls. In her newest book, "The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families," she points to the problems that develop when homes are lined with "electronic wallpaper" and children are "raised by appliances."
"All of these tools have their uses and their good points," Pipher writes. "It's the whole pile that's the problem. The cumulative effect of the pile is to change the way we live in families."
TV over parents
She worries particularly about the fact that each day children watch an average of four to six hours of television and are exposed to hundreds of advertisements each week. At the same time, she noted, studies indicate that parents spend 40 percent less time with their children than did parents in the 1950s.
"Children are learning their social skills from sitcoms," Pipher noted. Teachers, she added, were the first to notice "enormous changes" in children's behaviors, including the inability to negotiate conflicts, shortened attention spans, the spewing of inappropriate remarks and aggression.
"We need to take back our streets and our living rooms," she said.
(Copyright, 1996, Catholic News Service. Reprinted with permission.)