A hand-held 8 millimeter movie camera captured flickering images of my first day of preschool several decades ago. Then came family video cameras, a new innovation when my children were young. I remember the suitcase-sized Betamax we lugged around to school concerts and baseball games. Our focus and video quality were lousy, but we did manage to lay down a primitive pictorial record of our children’s early lives.
Honestly, I dreaded being the one to operate either the video or snapshot camera, because I felt that it impeded my experience of the happy occasion. Recently, I read some research supporting my reaction.
A study published in Psychological Science reports "snapping pictures may hamper how you remember those moments.” In the study, participants toured a museum, observing some objects and taking photos of others. Afterward, the study participants had a harder time remembering the items they photographed compared with the ones they simply looked at.
Dr. Diedra Clay, chair of Psychology at Bastyr University, explained that “the lens is a veil in front of your eyes and we don't realize it's there.” Viewing something from behind a camera lens removes us from the full experience of it.
Now many people carry a camera on their smart phones everywhere they go. Children are photographed continually as parents easily capture images of each experience. For any family, it provides a lovely way to keep forever the small events, rather than saving photography for milestones like weddings and graduations.
The challenge for parents is that getting behind the lens separates us from complete participation in the moment. We may capture a photo of an event we didn’t fully enjoy. Even worse, we may create resentment in our children, who would rather simply be silly than stop to strike a pose.
Moderation, as usual, is the key. Parents can save many images of their sweet children without allowing the camera to dominate the interaction. Children can engage their environments and opportunities more naturally without feeling they’re always on display (and without hard-wiring narcissistic tendencies into them).
And such unphotographed moments may also fill our hearts with more authentic memories of our kids’ childhoods.
