Many parents worry about the amount of time their children spend on their phones, but for some the more time their kids are glued to their devices, the better. Divorced and separated parents who do not live at home with their children and miss the daily contact of family life, have found that messaging services are a great way to stay in touch. In fact, a July Tesco Mobile survey of 1,000 parents found that 46% of them bought their children phones in the hope that they’d communicate with them more.
Peter Nelson, 42, communicates with his two children, Carys, 14, and Owen, 11, every day via messaging services. Here, Peter and Carys share what it’s like being a parent and child who live in separate homes in the digital age.
Peter Nelson
Before iMessage, I had to arrange to talk to my children through my ex-wife. I speak to them every day through a video call, and now that we have messaging services we can arrange it while they’re anywhere. Carys will be out shopping or at a friend’s house but she will always have her phone, so I know I can get hold of her. We’ve moved away from the more formal way of communicating – we used to sit in front of computers and use Skype – and it’s transitioned into something more natural thanks to the way technology has developed and the access they have to it.
We find that messaging services work really well. It’s great that they can show you things – Owen might send me a link to something, and we can have a conversation about it. That’s one of the reason we gave them smartphones when they were quite young.
If I see something that I think one of them might like, then I will just ping it to them. It’s another way to maintain that connection by sharing things – it’s a very quick and effective way to do that and it gives us something to talk about at the end of the day. When you aren’t there on a day-to-day basis, you need to find these things to talk about.
One of the big issues associated with kids is this worry that they are on the phone all the time, but actually this is how they communicate. It’s entirely normal to them, so you can either embrace it or reject it and end up not talking to them. My thinking was that if this is what they are used to, and it really is like life to them, then that is my best way of getting hold of them. And because they are connected to their friends all the time, if you were to interrupt that with phone calls then you’d get in the way of their conversations with friends and they’d resent it. So it’s better to send them a message in a way they are used to.
Even though I don’t live with them, I think that I communicate more with my children than my father did with me, even though I saw him pretty much every day. I didn’t share things with him to the extent that I can with my children, and they can with me. I didn’t have any deep and meaningfuls with my father.
Owen will now send me stuff he thinks I will find funny or interesting, while Carys will share her experiences more – photographs of places and friends and items of clothing. When I miss them on a day-to-day basis, I can just say hello. There’s a lot of comfort there. You can be pretty sure that you’re going to get them and that is very comforting. When you are away, you worry about them and you worry about losing that communication. If you can send messages that you know they will read, it’s quite reassuring.
Carys Nelson
I use mainly Snapchat and Instagram with my friends. I don’t really use email, but we do send texts. Snapchat is easiest, though, because all of my friends are on it.
iMessage is mainly for my family: my mum, my dad, my brother and my grandparents and my cousins, also some family friends. I don’t know why we use Snapchat for friends and iMessage for family, but it’s definitely the case that all the adults don’t have Snapchat.
When Dad left, we would talk on Skype every day. It was really important because things were suddenly different and we wanted to find ways to keep in contact. Now we do iMessage and FaceTime video calls instead. It’s nice to catch up and see each other, rather than just talking on the phone.
Can I imagine talking to Dad on Snapchat? Not really, it would be a bit weird. I definitely talk to friends in a different way. I sometimes use emojis with my mum but never with Dad. I think he would be chill with it, but I’ve never done it.
I speak to Dad quite often, just little messages. I send him photos of things I’ve done, so he can see what I’ve been doing, and then when I’m with Dad, I communicate with Mum by messaging.
It definitely makes it easier when I’m not with them because I know that I can always communicate with them when I’m with the other parent. It helps us to stay closer. I think if it was just a normal phonecall and nothing else – no video call or messages – I’d miss them a lot more because it wouldn’t be the same as seeing them, or getting an answer straight away when I send a message. I know that if I message them, I will hear back from them almost straight away, even if Dad is at work.
Dad also messages me to tell me to go to bed, even if he’s in the same room. I think it’s because he doesn’t want to say it out loud. Sometimes it’ll work, but sometimes I’ll just look at him in a funny way.
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