Technology and Teenagers

Five Thoughts About My Children and their Virtual Worlds

File:Hewlett-Packard Model 85 Personal Computer (23127986449).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

It is a gray and rainy day and I must soon rush along to more birthday preparations—October is the Month of many familial Celebrations of Birth—and, being deeply uninterested in scrolling around looking at any ghastly political news or what strange things people have said about God and the world, I thought it might be fun to assemble another listicle about children and teenagers.

I am in that delicate spot where my children all have their own lives—including, to various degrees—online lives. Like, for example, most of them are on Instagram. Two of them are doing Inktober and one is doing fake Bible quotes. I find their relationship with the world fascinating, for they move back and forth between IRL (in real life) and virtual interactions seamlessly, without puzzling over it. When I make the acquaintance of someone in person and then find that same person online, I have to spend several days trying to reconcile the two kinds of people together into a whole. My children don’t seem to have this problem, as far as I can tell.

At the same time, I think one reason my offspring are doing pretty well in life (so far—who knows what astonishing circumstances may befall me) is that they did not have a fully orbed online existence before they became teenagers. They watched a limited number of programs on Netflix and Amazon, and when Facebook Messenger Kids came along they were allowed to chat with a small group of people they knew for real from church, and they don’t get phones until they can drive.

In the bustle and chaos of those early childhood years, it felt, to me, like they were online too much. I was always railing against the horror of the television, the Kindle, and ultimately the iPod, but looking back, I think the amount of time they spent on a device must have been fairly reasonable. Not as good as no time online, which I think is probably the best path towards sanity, but better than gluing an iPhone onto their little baby fingers. Mostly they played real games, read books, and drove me crazy. Looking back and seeing that they are conversant with the virtual world that does exist and yet they are not enslaved to it, I guess God has been busy saving my soul.

So here are five short unorganized thoughts about children, teenagers, and technology on this blustery Columbus Meets All The Indigenous Peoples Day.

First, I think so much of life with children is about forming aesthetic inclinations and nurturing a hunger for beauty, and the worst way to do that, that I know of, is to tell people, even children, what they should like. All of us are born sinners and therefore have a propensity to linger over and then enjoy and then even create content that’s not that great. We should want to marvel over the different kinds of arches in a cathedral but it’s a lot easier to watch just one or a hundred more videos of Elon’s new robots. The point is, that when something is objectively bad, we should feel bad for liking it. I therefore had a policy that books and programs I didn’t personally enjoy were not forbidden, but I would not be persuaded to read those things aloud or watch them. If some kid wanted me to read a book or spend half an hour watching something, it had to be something that would actually amuse and delight me. Thus, I could always be cajoled into some Word Girl on a rainy afternoon, or Pingu (I don’t know what people watch now, I know I’m dating myself) but never Wild Kratts because those guys were too cheerful and annoying. The child was welcome, provided all his homework and chores were done and my house was spotless, to half an hour of the latest creature power or whatever, but he would have to watch it by himself because I had a universe full of better things to do. The caveat, of course, is that some things are wicked and no one will be watching them in my house because they actively corrupt and destroy the soul, but when something isn’t necessarily wicked, but is just sort of dumb—a category that makes up the vast majority of content production these days—I was not willing to waste my personal time on that stuff. This method seems to have formed their tastes and inclinations without making them mad at me for making a lot of complicated rules or spoiling all the fun.

Second, I refused to learn how to work any device. I am not your tech person. Gosh, I can barely use my own phone and I’m not interested enough to fix things for myself let alone a bored seven-year-old. Are you kidding? Learn how to sign into Amazon by yourself. Just try every password. How should I know what the passwords are? No, I’m not going to write them all down in one place. What am I, God that I can remember the last sign-in? What? You can’t get into audible because your father got a new phone and bla bla bla? Your technological agonies are as the sound of the ocean in my ears. Of course, this backfired because they did figure it out and are now super proficient at navigating online. My bad.

Third, we opted not to get mad during the long winter evenings when we were reading a nice book aloud, all cozy around the fire, and everyone was on a device playing games or texting or messaging people far beyond our own four walls. They were listening, and it would have been a lot more cutesy and demure if they’d all been sewing sofa cushions or making their own clothes but you can’t have everything.

Fourth, we did buy them Kindles and iPods when they were kids that did have wifi access. They could play games, listen to books, watch some stuff, and chat, as I said. But I never ever agreed to charge those suckers, say, on a long trip when the charge ran out, or go look for them when they were lost, or spend even a second feeling sad when they got broken. If you broke it, you had to wait until your birthday or Christmas to get a new one. In fact, I still try to be as utterly disdainful of technology as it is possible to be, and bored. These things are tools, not precious treasures. Too bad that they’re so expensive and we’re miserable without them, but soon the earth will go up in a ball of fire and we’ll never have to cope with them again.

Fifth, when they can drive they finally get to have a phone. Nevertheless, I categorically and utterly from the depths of my soul refuse to GPS track them on those phones. Moreover, when I took the fourth child off last week to get her driving permit and was asked if I’d like the state to notify me if she gets a ticket, I said no. She is sensible enough to tell me herself if she is in trouble and needs help. I’m not her adversary. In fact, I am her friend, a help in times of trouble, and as such, I am not going to treat her like a child if she can operate an automobile. It feels weird and intrusive to imagine that I should know where my adult children are every moment of the day. Isn’t it enough that we can call each other on the app part of the stupid phone? If you can drive, you are an adult and are responsible for yourself. If you want to let me know where you are, that’s great, but I’m not going to track you. Please, I beg you, just learn to use your own GPS and go live your life. If you get lost, I guess you’ll have to describe your surroundings to me and I’ll try to imagine in my mind’s eye where you are. Good luck, I’m praying for you. Also, please don’t call while you are actually driving.

And that, O Best Beloved, is how I have been navigating the minefields of this technological age. So far it seems like it’s going ok, but I welcome all your thoughts about how I could have done it better. That, after all, is the true meaning of motherhood. Have a lovely day!