What Are We Going To Do About The Phones

No, I haven't read Anxious Generation.

I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks in the NY area visiting friends - mostly friends with kids. One family had kids the same age as mine, the other was older - 14 and 11.

When we were with the other family with a 4 and a 6 year old, we let them watch TV at night, but for 90% of the visit the kids were playing, or outdoors, or playing outdoors. More than once we remarked on how people now lament that kids spend all their time inside, on screens. Ha, HA! Look at US! Our kids are playing PRETEND! They’re filthy! They’re tired! Look! This one skinned her knees! Ho, HO!

And they were! They happily explored outside, inventing games, having weird little conversations we couldn’t hear while on my friend’s swing set. It felt so good and pure, so much like what we did as little kids in the 90s. And there we were, the parents, phones in hand, ready to capture every peep, beep and giggle in 1080p HD at 60 fps. So many hours of video, shot during the best moments of my life. I don’t know if my kids will remember those moments, really, or only through the suggestion of the videos we may or may not show them later. And if they do actually remember them, I wonder whether they’ll recall my face, or just the back side of my iPhone. The red silicone cover obscuring my grin and teary eyes.

When they were little, like babies little, I tried to stay off my phone when I was around them. I felt like they’d see me seeing my phone, pouring all my attention and energy into the screen, my face slurping away into a drooling internet doomscroll, and they’d grow up believing - Phone > Me.

I tried, and I walked myself through that horror film scenario every day: my sweet fat baby thinking he’s second place to my phone. But still, I couldn’t totally set it down. I think part of it was I was so deep in PPMD and new mom loneliness and isolation and it felt like my lifeline back to the old me, or at least the world outside my living room, but really it’s just that I have a full blown phone addiction, and it was a nice escape from the intensity of “being present”. I had a hard time being present. Making eye contact with my life. Yikes!