Posted by Prego Brings Recording Device to Dinner Tables
They mean well. Prego, the well-known maker of a litany of pasta and pizza sauces, wants American families to spend more time in conversations around the table.
It’s not a bad idea, considering the great American family tradition has been in decline. While up to 84% of the Silent Generation used to eat nightly dinners together, Gen X’s experience dropped to 59%, Millennials declined to 46%, and only 38% of Gen Z reported eating family dinners together on a regular basis.
What’s more, when household members do gather around to eat meals, distractions like TV or cell phone screens often squelch family conversation.
So Prego has released a device called the Connection Keeper, to encourage more family conversation at the dinner table, with the ability to record these exchanges for posterity.
Do you ever find yourself wishing you could remember Grandma’s cooking secrets she shared last Christmas, or revisit an adorable phrase your toddler said? The solution: a simple gadget priced at $20, and not much larger than the lid of a pasta jar, placed in the center of the dinner table. Press one button and it starts recording.
With a pair of microphones, it captures what’s touted to be CD-quality audio. Bring it out for special occasions like Thanksgiving or Easter, and with its microSD card it can record for up to eight hours. You can capture those yarns from grandparents you’d like to save for generations, or some of the comical questions the youngsters ask so you can tease them about it when they’re older.
Of course none of this will happen if you can’t get the conversation going. So Prego’s “bundle” with the purchase includes spaghetti noodles, a jar of Prego pasta sauce, and a deck of cards that contain conversation ideas and prompts, in case your family is the quiet type.
Here’s where it gets dicey. You can transfer the conversations to a computer with a USB-C device and upload them to StoryCorps’ dedicated microsite, where they’re preserved and supposedly only accessible by the uploader.
You can choose to share the recordings with other StoryCorps users (making it easier to exchange with distant relatives) as well as to the general public. You can even choose to archive them in the Library of Congress, but doing so automatically grants permission to make your conversations public.
If you want to get a Connection Keeper you’d better hurry, because Prego is only putting a limited number of devices on the market. Some say it could lead to invasion of privacy. Others call it a clever way to preserve memories. Either way, it’s got a lot of people talking about Prego – which is a win for the maker. Get the full story.