Concentration Span

Call me intolerant, call me a mobile phone novice... but there's something that really shocks me.

We are a group of parents gathered in the school cantine. Opposite us, our three-year old children form a straggling, bouncy line admidst the homemade Christmas decorations.
It is their very first Christmas "concert", and they have a few short songs they wish to dazzle us with.

As the sweet jangle of three-year old singing fills the room, I am suddenly aware of the fact that every single mother (there is only one dad, and he is behind me) other than me is clutching her mobile phone. Granted, some of them are using it to take photos, observing the whole thing through the minuscule eye of a flat screen, but some of them are simply doing what I call the "mobile phone caressing routine": stroking it, staring at it, willing it to ring.

Then, of course (I'm sure you can see where this is heading...), a phone rings. Loudly and insistently. Every mother scrabbles to check whether the ringing phone is her own (not,as you might expect, out of embarrassment, but rather, to make sure they aren't missing anything important).
The lucky recipient identifies the call as her own... and answers.
Just like that: a cheery "Allo?" boomed out right there in the midst of our three-year-olds' first Christmas concert.

There is a general shuffling. You can tell people are distracted. And yes, by "people", I mean the parents, not the kids.
The magic fails to materialise: there is no wonderment, no involvement, no sense of calm.

We worry about the attention span of our kids. As far as I can see, it's the parents we should really be concerned about.