Remember the summertime of your youth — that seemingly endless expanse of time between the end of a school year and the beginning of another? The time just rolled over onto itself. The days felt long and leisurely. There was always time to play with a friend, make a wish on a dandelion puff, eat a wedge of watermelon, or just stare at the clouds in the sky. The innocence of childhood was a wonderful thing. Summer was a time to dream of the future, of the great things you hoped to accomplish in this amazing journey called life.
Stacks of books were checked out of the library. Remember books? Not books that you were required to read, but books you wanted to read. Books about other people’s remarkable lives and fantasies and ideas. Books to inspire. Magic! Plans were hatched to climb mountains, sail across seas, or explore foreign lands. Nothing was too big or daunting for a summer daydream. If you could dream it, you could do it. Of course, this was ages ago, long before every child on earth seemed to be issued a cell phone at birth.
Kids don’t read much anymore. Well, not books, anyway. Kids spend most of their time reading their tiny screens, barely looking up to process the life going on around them. Parents give their children phones to appease them and keep them quiet. Kids used to be noisy and demanding and curious. That curiosity was healthy and manifested itself in a thousand questions to their parents about everything under the sun. The questions have been silenced now. Why ask questions of your parents when you can just ask Siri? But have you thought about what kind of answers they are being given?
The tech industry has literally taken over our minds and the minds of our children. The tiny screens are winning. We are programed to constantly be on our phones and to turn to our phones for our every need. Got a question? Ask Siri. Need directions? Ask Waze. Want to order food? Text UberEats. There’s a remedy for everything on the tiny screens, so why look anywhere else?
Control our minds and we will be controlled. It sounds very conspiracy theorist, but honestly, have you ever seen anything like this? Kids that hang out together are staring at their phones instead of talking to each other. They seem to have lost the capacity to interact with one another. They suffer from deep anxiety and depression. They constantly compare themselves to others on social media. If they don’t get enough likes on a post, they are despondent. What they achieve in life doesn’t matter unless it’s posted online and met with approval. Cyber-bullying is real and suicide rates of our young people has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this?
Instead of seeing the devastating effects of tech in our lives and trying to change things, we seem to have sunk even further into the quagmire. Books have been almost completely phased out of school along with paper and pens. Kids can’t write in cursive anymore and very few can tell time on an analog clock. Kids are issued computers so they can continue to stare at screens all day, every day. And the ever-present smartphones are a daily fact of life for our children, from the very small to the very tall.
Recently at a family restaurant, I witnessed a large family with grandparents and aunts and uncles and kids sitting around a table eating dinner. The phones were there too, even in the hands of the smallest child in the highchair. His mom passed him her phone to keep him occupied while the grownups chatted. You see what’s happening here?
In the old days, that child would have been included in the conversation, perhaps passed around to the relatives with love and amusement. All of this would have contributed to the socialization of the child. But that didn’t happen. A tiny screen was placed in his hands, and he was placated, silenced, sedated, starting early on the road to addiction to devices. Because we are all addicted. From small to tall. Our phones ping and we look. Why? Because we are programmed to look. We must look. We can’t help ourselves, and our children are exactly the same.
But what are we missing out on because of our phones? Life, just life. Sometimes I wish these magical phones would simply go away – disappear! What if we woke up one morning and the phones were gone? We would have to learn again how to exist in this world on our own — how to read a book, how to have a conversation, how to tell time, how to read a map, how to daydream. It sounds marvelous, doesn’t it?
It’s not too late to make changes for your children. Maybe for the summer, you can put their phones away? Unplug, disconnect, turn off. Give them a chance to be children. Let their brains wander and be free, instead of being shackled by the invisible chains of technology. Remove the tiny screens and let your children experience life – the joy of summertime! It’s more important than you think.
Musings of a Super Mom 