There is only one answer and it's yes

I grew up in a home where we didn't really get to spend lots of family time together, and this wasn't because we secretly hated ourselves, but because everyone one of us was brought up with something I call tough love.

_{Photo by Zach Reiner}

Back then, we didn't have any dinning room or table and this wasn't a surprise, considering we lived in the ghetto at the time, so trying to chat and catch up during dinner time wasn't possible, seeing how we never really sat down at the same place to eat and discuss, it was either someone was eating here while the next person was eating somewhere else or vice versa.

Like I said, I grew up with tough love so the only time my family (my siblings and I) really cared to show that we loved each other was by defending ourselves whenever one of us was in trouble or in some sort of fight with someone else. My siblings are always prepared to defend you and help you win that fight if necessary, but trying to do something as easy as being affectionate with them was a mission impossible.

Fortunately for us, my father understood how important having to spend time as a family was, so when we moved out of the ghetto to a far more better house and environment, he had tried his best in trying to force us to always eat at the dinning table as one big family, something he didn't really get successful at because we all weren't always eating at the same time and the last thing he wanted to do was force someone to eat when they weren't feeling hungry.

So when he realized that the dinning table idea wasn't working, he had changed his plans to something else, family meetings. He started calling for occasional family meetings, and although he was mostly the one who did the talking during these meetings, none of us dared to not pay attention or be on our phones while he was talking because no one wanted to have their phones seized, smashed or whatever it is his mind tells him to do with the phone at that moment.

And although I wouldn't admit it at the time, having to be present with the family in real time and just spending time with them was a lot of fun, and this is because technology has gotten so advanced and is now taking a lot of our time that we could go a whole day without saying a word to someone physically, which I feel isn't really a good thing, so when people ask the question if phones should be banned during family time, there is only one answer to that question and the answer is yes.

And this is because family time isn't a lot of time and we should be able to drop our phones, ignore all the distractions the world out there has to offer and just focus on us, our family, even if it's just for the next ten minutes.