Does distance really make the heart grow fonder?
It’s hard to believe it could in today’s high-tech world, especially when it comes to parent-child relationships.
After all, tech-savvy moms and dads can easily reach out and touch their smartphone-toting offspring with the press of a single button regardless of how far they stray from the nest.
In fact, according to a new study just published in AARP The Magazine, parents aged 47 to 66 admit to communicating with their 20-something children several times a day despite the fact that they don’t live in the same city.
The online query, “Parents and Kids: Then and Now,” found that 31 percent of today’s young adults communicate with their parents via text, phone or email on a regular basis. In some cases, the college-aged respondents admitted to calling or texting their parents more than five times a day.
I live 5,000 miles away from my parents and we speak about once or twice a day. However, my mom and dad are about as far from tech-savvy as you can get. We communicate almost exclusively via landline phone. Still, that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s nearly impossible to miss your child too much these days given how accessible kids are thanks to mobile devices.
Of course, access to advanced telecommunication devices also leaves the door open for what some consider “unhealthy” dependency of young adults on their parents.
ABC’s Good Morning America recently ran a piece on tech-savvy children who struggle with their independence after they move out of their parents’ house. The show featured a mom whose friend received no less than 10 phone calls from her 20-something child asking for help to cook a chicken. The college-aged daughter wanted to know what types of seasonings to use, what temperature to cook it at, and when she needed to take it out.
Not for nothing, but if the daughter is such a high-tech whiz why couldn’t she have used her skills to look up the information on the Internet rather than call her mom a dozen times?
Then again, my tune may change when my own daughter moves out of the house and the bulk of our relationship is maintained via tech tools.
How has the relationship with your children been affected by high-tech gadgets?