In a tech-driven world, you either know someone who can’t function without checking their socials every 30 seconds, or you are that someone.

While this is mostly a minor annoyance to anyone who still attempts the old fashioned eye-contact and conversation approach to hanging out, it’s becoming a serious crisis in Germany, where phone addiction is killing children.

German lifeguards have issued a warning that the growing number of child deaths due to drowning over the summer can be attributed to their parents’ obsession with their phones.

According to The Guardian:

More than 300 people have drowned in Germany this year, with hardly a day passing during the current heatwave when a swimmer has not died.

The German Lifeguard Association (DLRG) – the biggest organisation of its kind in the world, providing 40,000 volunteer lifeguards at German beaches, lakes and the coast – has made a direct connection between children getting into difficulty in the water and parents being too busy on their mobile phones to notice.

“Too few parents and grandparents are heeding the advice: when your children and grandchildren are in the water, put your smartphone away,” Achim Wiese, the DLRG’s spokesman, said.

Peter Harzheim of the German Federation of Swimming Pool Supervisors (yes, that’s a real thing) says that parents are treating them like babysitters and the swimming pools like “kindergartens”:

“In the past, parents and grandparents spent more time with their children in the swimming pool. But increasing numbers of parents are fixated by their smartphones and are not looking left or right, let alone paying attention to their children,” he told German media. “It’s sad that parents behave so neglectfully these days.”

Parents and their smartphones aren’t the only ones under fire for neglect:

The organisations have also blamed the school system for not making swimming lessons obligatory from an early age. Budget cuts have also led to swimming pools shortening their opening times.

An increase in the number of families in which both parents worked full-time has led to difficulties for families to fit in swimming lessons, the DLRG has warned.

In the past week alone, drownings across the country have made headline news, including that of a seven-year-old boy who died at a pool in the Bavarian town of Marktredwitz. In Münster a man died after jumping into a canal in order to cool off.

The German Swimming Association warns that with the lack of state support for swimming lessons, Germany is at risk of “turning into a land of non-swimmers”.

“As a result, many people lack the right knowledge about how to behave in the water,” the DSV’s Axel Dietrich told German media.

If you’re going to Google the right way to behave in the water, best do it before you get to the pool.

[source:guardian]