Yes ok this video clip is 3 years old but it still makes me laugh.

I recently read a Wall Street Journal article which described the influence mobile phones and PDAs that offer hand-held email (which don’t?) are having on our children.

With parents completely distracted by their mobile devices, following their latest emails, Twitter feeds, Facebook or Linked In invites, we are spawning a generation of Blackberry orphans; children who are often ignored by parents who tend to be exhibiting more anti-social behaviour than their own teenage children.

Having read this article, I realised to my horror that I had fallen squarely into that category of parent. As the WSJ article suggested, I had been sneaking around the house to covertly check my emails on my Blackberry or to look at my latest Salesforce pipeline and Tweets using the family iPod touch, while my 4 year old son had been pestering me for it to play his shoot ‘em up tank game.

There is however the counter argument that says it’s better to have a parent at home than not at all. WSJ quotes Jim Balsillie, the chairman of Research In Motion, who says children should ask themselves, “would you rather have your parents 20% not there or 100% not there?”

With the proliferation of social media on mobile devices (how many social media apps already exist for the iPhone?) this situation will only worsen, although children won’t be the only victims!

A University of Wisconsin study (Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy, 2006) highlighted that mobile phones could cause significant psychological distress and lower family satisfaction. Whilst absent spouses have often contributed to marital breakdown, the modern equivalent exists with the partner being “present” but stooped, typing away on their mobile phone. A warning to us all!

With over 45 million mobile phone users in the UK, mobile marketing is fast becoming a key component of any digital marketing plan.

Always at the forefront of digital marketing training, Emarketeers has launched a mobile marketing training course, the first one to take place on 16 June 2009 in Covent Garden, Central London.

Using good and bad case studies, the course will teach attendees where the real revenue potential lies in mobile comms, as well as techniques on integrating mobile into other media channels.

The 16 June course will be run by Jonathan Macdonald who has created global mobile comms strategies for names such as Unilever, IBM, BP, Vodafone and Nestle among others.

BOOK YOUR PLACE EARLY