Phones are raising robot children

Children are in thrall to the mystical, hypnotic power of phone screens. They eat meals without complaint, remain calm and oblivious to the outside world, and even lull themselves to sleep while staring into the bright, animated screens. Phones are, in short, a godsend for parents. Their children are manageable as long as they have phones; they never stray out of bounds or badger their parents with incessant questions about the world and everything in it.

It is a neat solution to a common problem—children are greedy, exacting creatures. They demand constant attention, engagement, affection, and can tell whenever your mind wanders elsewhere. They bring up uncomfortable subjects, are brutally honest about your new haircut, and frequently embarrass their parents in public. But now, phones, magical as they are, do all the heavy lifting. No toy or gimmick could ever compare. They numb your brain to anxiety, fear, unhappiness—all emotions that require deeper reflection and strain. You feel only an unfocused, buoyant pleasure that leaves you in a zombified state.

The phone acts as parent, sibling, and friend to children. Unlike its human counterparts, a phone never tires, loses its patience or temper, or fails to deliver. It is often the most steady and dominant presence in the child’s life, perhaps surpassing even the caregivers in importance. It becomes essential if you want an orderly, functional household.

Children absorb all that the phone tells them like sponges, and in the process, form strange and confused ideas about the world. There is no scope for boredom when entertainment is a swipe away. So, they needn’t make up new games, trade stories about ghostly visitations, or speak to their imaginary friend. The impulse to create, imagine, plan is dying, and instead, a sense of passivity and helplessness is taking over.

It is convenient to point fingers and lay the burden of guilt at the parents’ feet. After all, this is their doing. But most simply have little choice in the matter. Even in two-parent households, work gets in the way of parenting. Either you take ten ten-hour shifts and neglect your children, or you give them your time and love, and they go hungry. It is a near-impossible choice, but the latter will obviously win out.

When experts generously dole out parenting advice, there’s much ado about how parents should bond with their children and prioritize spending time with them. And while the advice is excellent, it applies to the few, not the many.

A perfect solution does not exist, but a few acceptable ones do.

A distant past when the internet wasn’t even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, mythical as it seems, did exist. Parents had to make do, and they survived by enlisting children’s mostly useless help in household work. This way, you could rest easy that they weren’t performing life-threatening stunts elsewhere or ruining your nice furniture.

Children are, as a whole, easy to please. All is fresh and exciting to them, and the natural world presents a thousand amusements. Unleash your kids on nature; she can handle them. Set them free from neurotic, overcautious parenting. They are not made of glass, and treating them as such handicaps them for life.

Echoing what thousands of disgruntled grandparents tell their children, there is folly and ruin in holding on too tightly and wisdom in letting go.