Spend Time with people and Less with Your Phone.

Bishop Anthony's blog 15th January's

“Six years on a mobile phone”: that was the headline I read the other day.  Apparently, it’s one estimate of the average time a person spends in their life-time.  A third of the time’s spent texting; a quarter on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter; a fifth talking, and the remainder on apps, catching up with celebrity gossip, shopping and visiting dating websites.  All this amounts to 2hours 20minutes a day for the “average person”.

This reminded me of research done some years ago about the length of time the average husband and wife spent talking to each other.  The answer then was only 7minutes a day.  I don’t know if it has changed much but it doesn’t allow much communication to go on, and may have a good deal to say about divorce rates.

How we spend our time says lots about our priorities and what we really value. Part of what we all need time to do, is reflect on our priorities, our use of time, who and what we really value.  Looking more closely at ourselves can show up gaps between what we think we are like, or would like to be like, and are really like. 

I wonder if you made any New Year resolutions and if so how they are going two weeks on?  You may well have planned to do things differently in some way, see more of someone, or take up something new, or keep fitter.  Perhaps this is a good point to take stock and either focus anew or re-write the resolutions!  And if you need to remind yourself of what you intended, text the resolutions to yourself or put them on your screen saver.

What we do all need is time with other people we care about, and not only time in front of a screen which, however entertaining, useful and enjoyable, is ultimately no substitute for real encounters.