Jan
3
From what I’ve been told — multiple times, often accompanied by dramatic hand gestures — Riley is the only student in his entire middle school who doesn’t have a phone. Yes, literally every other kid has one, even that one guy who threw his phone on the ground on purpose when he was mad and shattered the screen, even he has a new one. Even his friend’s little sister has a phone and she’s only in third grade. But not Riley! He’s just expected to wander the halls, phoneless, like a total peasant.
I get it, the phone-longing. It’s true most kids do seem to have one, in his grade and even in Dylan’s class. Everyone’s texting, everyone has Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube accounts. Even if Riley wasn’t surrounded by peers with iPhones, he only has to look up in his own house to get the idea that staring at a tiny screen must be a pretty compelling activity.
There are responsibility-related reasons I’m not eager to give him a phone, like the fact that both kids have those Gizmo Gadget watches and we have to nag constantly about remembering to keep them charged or remembering to wear them period. Or the fact that he is famous for dropping, misplacing, spilling liquid into, or otherwise ruining various objects from throw pillows to iPod Shuffles.
But if I’m honest with myself, my reluctance actually has very little to do with the inevitable repair/replacement fee. It’s more about … the potential for unhappiness, I guess.
You know what I mean? The kind of overly-plugged-in life we try not to live when we’re connected 24/7, but it’s kind of a struggle for grown-ass adults so how can we expect kids to manage it? Even with time limits, it’s a siren call that never goes away. The time-wasting scrolling, the endless waves of bite-sized content, the updates and arguments and unrealistic images and misread communications. The pull away from being in the moment in favor of documentation. The increasing fear that if we are not acknowledged with hearts and likes we may not exist at all.
Okay, it’s possible I am getting a little Black Mirror about this when the reality is that he just wants to play Goat Simulator more often. Still, there is a world I am deeply familiar with — the one in which my phone is a bottomless well of distractions, one that allows me to fade out of my real life whenever I want in favor of mental and physical immobility — and there’s a world I can only imagine, where kids’ social lives are whiplashed by each other’s texts and posts and check-ins and jesus, wasn’t it bad enough when the grapevine was limited to whispers in a hallway?
Anyway. Riley is hoping 13 is the magic number for him, phonewise. Me, I’d rather wait … but until when? When is the right age to say here, here is a thing I use all the time, that I sort of never wanted you to have.
Dec
23
The presents are wrapped, the stocking stuffers have been evaluated and the inevitable item-per-child discrepancy has been rectified, the pine-scented candle has been purchased to supplement the artificial tree (TEAM FAKE 4EVA, by the way; I swear it’s the best gift I ever gave myself and I permanently fixed my vision with Lasik in 1999), the cookies have been baked, the cards have been sent, that one super weird confused-theme religious card (this year: cartoon Native American-costumed children complete with feather headdresses and warpaint huddled around baby Jesus) has been received, the novelty oversized bag is at the ready because do not even come at me with the paper and bag-tossing on Christmas morning it puts the garbage in the bag or it gets the eggnog colonic, the tacky-ass folding table is on hand to provide enough seating for visiting family to have the perfect view of our sunroom at breakfast where I am 99.8% sure the cats will have killed yet another rat and strewn its entrails into a festive design for all to enjoy.
Let’s do this thing. I hope you have a really wonderful holiday, my longtime Internet friends.
-
My product review site:
[