Please, please, please put away your phones...

Society is creating and storing up a terribly toxic and damaging culture for our children and young people with this constant internet access across all age groups.

Failing to judge can also be viewed as a collective failure of judgement.

Also it's 11pm and probably ramadom

I mean firstly it's not 'probably' Ramadan, it is Ramadan.

But what on God's earth would that have to do with a child being neglected on a train at 11pm?

Totally agree OP.

Why are we so scared of admitting yes there are shit parents. Stop making excuses.

No matter how tired and drained you are, a small child should not be ignored. If anything doom scrolling is probably not best for a tired parents mental health. Or anyones really.

Urgh I see parents/adults round here with noise cancelling headphones and pushchairs :\

That said, I also see dog owners doing the same - ignoring their dog. What's the bloody point of having a child or dog if you block them from both sight and mind?

I agree 100 %
Ive been out all day and phone only came out of my bag to pay for stuff !!
its a habit scrolling and its actually easier than u think to breaks the habit ! Just keep busy and leave your phone where it’s not distracting you !
Nothing is ever more important than your baby !!
I was lucky I had my 2 in 2000 and 2003 phones not used then like they are now thou !

Every primary school in my area has posters on the gates and in the playgrounds asking parents to 'Greet your child with a smile, not a mobile'.

That's how bad it's got, that parents have to literally be told to interact with their kids, when they've been at school for 6+ hours.

Disagree IMO phones bring it to an entirely new level. I’m a phone addict. I know it and everyone around me knows it. I spend average 6-7 hours a day on my phone -
early morning, evening, middle of the
night.

I really want to stop but it’s so hard, particularly as I have anxiety issues so I will
often use my phone as an escape from my thoughts.

i think I will I invest in a dumb phone as its the only way I think i will actually be able to cut myself off.

Well there's 2 of you on here that think that, everyone else completely disagrees. Make of that what you will...

Why not?

If no-one judged neglectful, selfish behaviour the world would be in an even worse state than it is now.

11pm? Maybe they were trying not not give the child any attention so they would fall asleep?

…. Is how the country has got in the state it’s currently in

lets judge people more
more judgement

less bullshit behaviour

But whatever, you should never, ever ignore your kids. I hate seeing a parent with an awake child in a pushchair and the parent has earphones in.

Our Local Authority, Stay and Play and all Play sessions has lots of signs requesting no phones in the building so that parents interact with their children. I have seen parents leave their child unsupervised to go out and browse their phone. Just like they had to feed their addictions by going for a fag. Doom scrolling is very much an addiction.

There have always been shit parents who don’t engage with their child. It’s extremely unlikely that they will change their ways because someone makes a melodramatic social media post begging them to. The flip side is of course parents do engage and there’s a raft of threads about ‘performance parenting’ because someone asked their kid what sound a cow makes whilst sitting on a train.

There’ll also be an aspect of just about everyone’s parenting that ‘saddens’ someone else…….

Gives me the rage. Dad pushing a pram along a beautiful country path, with his phone balanced on the handles watching something. People on phones bumping into me (I’m on crutches), children on devices in restaurants. Where will it lead?

On the flip side of all this I watched a lovely young mum interacting with her toddler on the bus the other day, She wasn't 'performance parenting' but chatting with her daughter- looking out of the window, counting red cars they could see and talking about where they were going etc. Perfectly normal 20+ yrs ago but quite refreshing to see these days.

I miss when the Internet was only accessible via computer in the lounge. You'd sit down, faff around, do your bits you needed to do, then switch power off until next time!!

We seriously don't need access to the Internet in our pockets. What do we even use it for in those moments like on the tube etc - looking at social media, news articles, maybe work emails. Definitely would be better done at a "designated" time .. and children would see you at a computer/laptop and see you're doing a task
Whereas they just see parents with phones attached to their hand constantly and think that's normal and how it should be.
It's even in tv shows. Elmo used to say "let's look it up on the computer" now there's just Smarty the Smartphone who shows Elmo YouTube videos (not joking btw)
It honestly depresses me
I'm going to try and be better!!

Utter bollocks.

The OP said the baby's attempts to engage with its mum were repeatedly ignored for half an hour.

I do wish people would stop trying to make excuses for child neglect.

I don't care how exhausted they were, it's not hard to put your phone down and acknowledge your child.

This kind of excessive phone use isn’t just sad, it is rewiring the brain. Both in adults and crucially in children and is already being proven to be behind the catastrophic rise in anxiety and poor mental health for Gen Z and now Gen Alpha like the child in the OP.

Great post @User63859 and I’d highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.