Frank Thoms, Teacher in the Rye

One full of media, full of parents, supervisors, coaches. In a child’s earliest years, parents drive them to ‘playdates,’ sometimes only a block away. Later, on their phones they follow their children to school. Young children hold wondrous electronic pads in their hands as early as two to three-years-old (even in Mexico where I now live). Later, phones holding their full attention while scrolling endlessly. The pandemic lead to an unnatural online learning, children at home on computers (those who had them).

My childhood, we were on our own. Today’s children are distracted, directed, supervised. In mine, our mothers saw us for lunch and at home in time for dinner. Today, a different world. Better perhaps with mothers not attached to the home but less so with no one home with children except their phones.

I understand humanity as community. The earliest humans as far as we can surmise were storytellers while sitting around campfires. They functioned together, parented together, hunted and fished together. Life was face to face.

And it has been face to face throughout history. But now, one can surmise the power of the digital, the virtual becoming humanity’s new centerpiece. At birth, chips into our brains giving us what we need to grow. That may be true someday, but it’s unwise for us to celebrate this new difference. Humans are communal, our instincts support that. We are storytellers. We are adventurers. We play games. We create.

The best we can do for our children is to give them room to become who they are becoming, to allow them to grow without supervision, interference if you will. Stripping cell phones from schools is a good beginning. Teens and preteens will discover the wonder of face-to-face contact, a newfound sense of peace from not feeling compelled to constantly to stay in touch on their screens. Perhaps they will take this new-found joy––I think it can become that–-and affect it into other parts of their lives.

Parents can support this return to personal connecting by putting aside their phones at home and have phone-free dinners (if they have them, or if possible phone free breakfasts) and being sure their children go to bed phone free. And to find ways to build trust, perhaps asking their child to go alone to the store, to go to school without a parent invoking phone observation. Building trust builds agency, the ability to act on one’s behalf and on behalf of others. Small steps perhaps but necessary. Children isolated on their phones, away from play and interaction with their peers, and surrounded by hovering adults leads to loneliness and other mental health issues.

Can we interrupt this digital, virtual transformation? Or is it too late? Is it even possible? And one more  question, should we?