Almost 100% of today’s ad spots for the new TV screens, video games, movie services, and all sort of technology for your home are packed with vivid images of a happy family having fun together. Tech companies have for a while come ahead by blamelessly portray that their new screens, game consoles or video streaming services will get your family so close, they will be happier than the ones on TV spots.

But is it not an old sales trick to pick some existential problem or situation that people feel they need to improve on most and provide some sort of hopeful solution to the conflict? Is it not common for TV ads to tell you you should feel ridiculously ashamed if you fail to act right now and buy whatever these spots are showing you as the “miracle” product that will satisfy your need? How many times have you heard “more family time,” “family fun,” and the like during these commercials?

Yes, Americans’ most vulnerable pride is touched here: Family time and your kids. These companies know that and they are going to make the impossible to get something out of this problem. And they are not really interested in getting rid of the problem, because if they did, how are they going to sell their next tech gizmo?

According to a 2004 national poll released by the Center for a New American Dream, Americans are overworked, overspent and rethinking the American dream. At a time when Americans are divided politically, they seem to agree on one thing: we aren’t focused on what really matters. More than eight out of ten Americans believe that society’s priorities are “out of whack” and 93% agree that Americans are too focused on working and making money and not enough on family and community. Almost as many (more than 8 in 10) say they would be more satisfied with life if they just had less stress.

Advertising giant McCann-Erickson says advertisers now spend more than $230 billion a year, or $2,190 per household to target your family, and there is little question that much of that advertising is designed to effectively target kids. Kids 12-19 spent a record $155 billion of their own money in 2001, up from $63 billion just four years earlier. And according to kids marketing expert James McNeal, children aged 12 and under influenced more than $500 billion of their parents’ purchases in 2000.

A 2007 CareerBuilder.com survey, 37 percent of working dads say they’d leave their jobs if their spouse or partner made enough money to support the family. If given the choice, another 38 percent would take a pay cut to spend more time with their kids.

Nearly one in four (24%) working dads feel work is negatively impacting their relationship with their children. Forty-eight percent have missed a significant event in their child’s life due to work at least once in the last year and nearly one in five (18 percent) have missed four or more.

It is doubtful that these problems families face today are a result of not having enough family-fun gear or gadgets available at home to help us spend time together. Lack of family time is rather a reflection on many Americans’ vulnerability to shift their values and priorities due to work pressures or “trying to keep up with the Joneses.” It is a decision issue. It is a choice issue.

The question is: Are we going to let our values and priorities change so much that we will have to desperately “buy something” in order to spend more time at home?

Are all these new gadgets really going to solve the problem of not spending enough time with your family? Are we going to listen to the assumption that, in order to spend great family time, we have to get the next tech innovation or that new game console? One thing is for sure, if we listen to all those voices out there, we will be spending more time with the credit cards and in deep debt.

Simply and bluntly put: Just talk with your family, pray together, go to the park, play active games, eat together, DO THINGS together. THAT will solve the family problem!