What we look like when we plug in

We all see them. Perhaps we are among the guilty ones. We see them at restaurants: Families at dinner; each member plugged into his or her iPad, iPhone or iPod. We see them at work: Colleagues texting and checking statuses on social networking sites while simultaneously attempting to engage in a conversation with a co-worker.

So says Dave Wendland over on Harold’s Kids at Burson-Marsteller. It’s the kick-off to a blog post that calls for attention to our face-to-face relationships, even as we plunge more deeply into life online. The themes Wendland raises are now familiar — though I’m delighted he pointed me to Jay Dolan! — but I can’t think of  a single “we’re too plugged in” cri de coeur that has hit me as hard as the sentences above. Maybe because they describe our family, and our work life, and I desperately want to believe that it doesn’t have to be such a sad story.