Decline in Family Time

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My dad and I are about to drive North this afternoon, preparing for a workshop we teach tomorrow. As we were updating some of our research, my dad sent me the following article about the rapid decrease in family time (one of our “Seismic Shifts” we teach from our book is the shift from “community to individualism”).

Whether it’s around the dinner table or just in front of the TV, U.S. families say they are spending less time together.

The decline in family time coincides with a rise in Internet use and the popularity of social networks, though a new study stopped just short of assigning blame.

The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California is reporting this week that 28 percent of Americans it interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. That’s nearly triple the 11 percent who said that in 2006.

These people did not report spending less time with their friends, however.

Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the center, said people report spending less time with family members just as social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are booming, along with the importance people place on them.

Click here for the entire article.

Interesting article. Although we’ve found more and more research that people are actually spending less “face to face” time with friends too. They’re trying to replace that void with cyber relationships… and coming up empty.

The above article goes on to talk of the rising concern about how much time kids spend online. I’ll be blogging about this a lot this year. I spend quite a bit of time talking about these shifts in my book coming out this December, CONNECT.