My god. This. As a father of one I constantly see this. I take my 2 year old son to the park regularly. I carry a small knapsack and leave the phone in it with

My god. This. As a father of one I constantly see this. I take my 2 year old son to the park regularly. I carry a small knapsack and leave the phone in it with it configured to ring only if my wife calls (basically customized priority notification settings). We have a great time. Sure he likes to sometimes sit and pull blades of grass for 45 minutes instead of really running around but I stay somewhere around and be with him. And he's happy. I say this because there's two interesting behaviours I've seen. One is, if I have ever pulled my phone out to quickly check WhatsApp or anything else, he becomes angsty and does things like trying to pour sand on his head (this is mostly fine dust sand). I might be inclined to say he's bored. But there are lots times I can be 50m away and watching him play with grass and he'll look back at me every so often. As long as he knows I'm interested in what he's doing, he doesn't do that stuff. It's not out of fear either. I don't express much when he pours sand on himself. It's just attention. The second interesting thing I see is all the parents on their phones. It's terrible. They walk around like zombies, barely interested in their children. But always a step behind them. And their child will be doing something quite safe. Of course if you looked at them at that exact moment you'd think they are in a potentially dangerous situation. Like riding their bike at the side of a drain. I'll see the child do this for 2 minutes, suddenly the parent looks up and yells at them to stop. The child looks disappointed and they watch the parent vanish back into zombie mode. It's bizzare and heartbreaking. And all this passes on to the children. I see parents checking phones during outings and telling children to put theirs away and talk to each other. Sigh. Not going to work.