We take time out from the pressing issues facing the world to bring you a post-Labor Day installment of Jeepin’ with the grandkids. Taking a break after some serious off-roading in the neighborhood over the weekend to pose with grandpa and the Crim family Jeeps are, from left, Olivia Grace Dedert, Alexander Christopher Dedert and Kyndall MacKenzie Crim.

Kyndall is a kindergarten student, Olivia goes to preschool for the first time today and Alexander is a 15-month-old whirling dervish. The kids’ battery-operated Jeep has two forward speeds (topping out at 5 mph), reverse, a working radio and seat belts. They’re also being raised as Mizzou fans.

Those of us 50 and older probably remember sitting around the kitchen table for dinner when we were kids — usually between 5:30 and 6 — listening to our parents talk about their day and being peppered with questions about ours.

A little later, on certain nights, the entire family might gather around the TV and watch the usual prime time shows together. (This was when “prime” meant “good” and not “reality.”)

Or maybe Dad would spring for vanilla cones at the Dairy Queen, or we would all make the weekly trek to the grocery store. There were bike rides and roller skating and ballgames and church.

The common link was that families did things together, even working in the yard.

Not so much anymore.

An Associated Press story reported that the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California says 28 percent of Americans it interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. That’s nearly triple the 11 percent who said that in 2006.

In the first half of the decade, people reported spending an average of 26 hours per month with their families. By 2008, however, that shared time had dropped by more than 30 percent, to about 18 hours.

AP Technology Reporter Barbara Ortutay wrote that the decline in family time coincides with a rise in Internet use and the popularity of social networks, though a new study stopped just short of assigning blame. People surveyed did not report spending less time with their friends.

When I was a kid, we had one telephone (which was on a party line), one black and white TV set (with a vertical hold that didn’t always hold) and two channels to choose from. We “listened” to Cardinals games on the radio.

Today, we have Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Nearly everybody carries a cell phone or Blackberry or iPhone, and parents equip their kids with the same technology. There is cable and satellite TV with hundreds of channels to choose from.

And then there’s the Internet.

The same study showed that more people say they are worried about how much time kids and teenagers spend online. In 2000, when the center began its annual surveys on Americans and the Internet, only 11 percent of respondents said that family members under 18 were spending too much time online. By 2008, that grew to 28 percent.

“It’s not like television, where you can sit around with your family and watch,” said Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the center. The Internet, he noted, is mostly one-on-one.

So how is your family time?