My husband is on his iPad or his phone a lot. It is the last thing he does before bed and the first thing he reaches for in the morning.
We have a toddler and are pretty good at sharing childcare, but the minute I appear after work he gets his iPad out. It grates on me more than I can say (especially if we are eating dinner that I’ve cooked). I get that parenting can be lonely and tedious and that he likes to unwind at the end of the day, but I want us to spend time together as a family.
I know I can’t possibly be as sexy and fun as a device that’s been engineered by lots of rich Silicon Valley experts, but I try so hard not to be on my phone the whole time I’m with our kid, as I don’t want the kid to think the phone is more important than hanging out with him. I thought we were on the same page on this, but my partner doesn’t seem to see the dissonance between “our kid doesn’t get an iPad” and “I’ll be on mine the entire time”.
I’m feeling resentment building up and I don’t know how to address it. I love him and think he is kind and fun and hilarious. I miss having a relationship in which there isn’t an iPad.
On the rare occasions we’ve managed to have a date night since the baby, he did spend time with me and didn’t go on his phone. It was amazing and I want more of this in our everyday life. I want to set some boundaries, but there’s never a good time to ask as there is never a night when we are not tired. How can I ask for one screen-free night together a week?
Eleanor says: I’m hearing lots of different things here. There’s the way the screen use disrupts connection with you. There’s the worry that it’s affecting your child. There’s the feeling that you pick up the household work when he falls into the iPad vortex. Then there’s the meta problem that there’s never a good time to talk about it, though he might not know how you feel about this unless you tell him.
So even though it seems like there’s one issue – the screen – each of these might need different remedies.
It’s so easy to think that once we go “no screens” the rest will come rushing back. Push the iPad away and there’ll be a lovely new gap in our time that the old hobbies and social connections will fill.
But part of the problem with screens is that the more we use them, the more we forget or abandon the other stuff. It can feel like nothing else is waiting for us when we put them down. This can become self-fulfilling: as the hobbies and connections atrophy, non-screen life grows isolating and boring, we turn back to the phone to escape those feelings, and hey presto – time alone on a screen is both the comfort for and the cause of the problem.
I wonder whether the opposite of screen immersion isn’t no screens but a life outside that makes screens seem boring.
It might help to suggest some active alternatives in each of the parts of life you mentioned. Not just a night for the two of you without phones, but a night to do something specific – a game you’ve wanted to play, an outing you’ve wanted to take, even a movie as long as you’re watching it together. Not just, “Can you watch our kid without the iPad”, but “Is there some activity or memory you want to make sure you have together while he’s this age?”
At the extreme edges of screen use, even traditionally recreational things such as this – going on date night, watching a whole movie, reading a book to your kid – can feel like taxing burdens on your attention. Oh, now I have to have a whole idea for how to spend my time, and then I have to pay attention to it? Can’t I just “unwind”? But glazed-eyed scrolling isn’t actually recreation. It doesn’t recharge us. It doesn’t feel good.
Given you said he doesn’t use his phone on date nights, it doesn’t sound as though he’s reached that stage. If he has, I think it could only help to know how much you miss him and love spending time with him – just him, even when he’s tired and stressed. It’s so clear how much you like him.
Asking him to turn away from the screen a bit doesn’t need to feel as though you’re giving him homework. You’re just asking him because you love spending time with him, even when he feels as though he’s got nothing in the tank. That might be the first part of the reminder that he’s got connections outside the screen. Tell him, and it could feel like something good to return to.
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The reader’s letter has been edited for length
