Little House on the Virtual Prairie

I don’t think it’s just me. When we turn off the television, it comes back on. The device jumps from “Little House on the Prairie,” or “Perry Mason,” to a “program“ about bikinis for zombies.

In these troubled times perhaps I could find a more concerning topic to address than just hitting the “power off” button a second time. I’m unlikely to be afflicted with repetitive motion disease and paying attention to shutting off the TV could certainly be classified as the poster child for a first world problem.

But if you agree that it is not a coincidence nor the technological ineptness of a curmudgeonly 68-year-old then I suspect perfectly. Some programmer somewhere deliberately makes my TV jump back on to some vacuous show that—were I to watch it—would not only make me stupider but also somehow cost me money.

Similarly, the designers of addictive video games have data from millions of children playing Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Blood, Blood, Blood, Kill, Kill, Kill for thousands of hours. The programmers know that a kid is more likely to turn off the game when the unicorn dies than when they find a cache of imaginary coins. Analytics are scrutinized also to maximize adolescents obtaining their parents credit cards to purchase more powerful weapons. And don’t get me started about kids employing other kids to teach them how to get higher scores on version seven of Last Person Standing, a quaint simulation in which children are trained to virtually dismember every other player in an omni contra omni Hobbesian dystopia. Envision an updated version of Clue in which Professor Plum dissects Colonel Mustard with the chainsaw in the Torture Room.

My view of video games in general and violent video games in particular is well known to long suffering readers. But I gained a new insight about our children and the technology being thrust upon them recently. At the meeting of my professional organization in Detroit, the speaker asked the three hundred counselors in the audience to think about our childhoods. He pointed out that we all had bicycles. And pretty much everyone in the audience experienced some kind of mishap as a result of riding our bikes around town. Some of us fell off our bikes and skinned our knees. Some of us smacked our bicycles into parked cars—no, I don’t want to talk about it—and broke bones. The occasional injury notwithstanding, riding a bike was about skill, transportation, independence. Riding a bike was as commonplace as it was awesome. Proficiency on a bike meant that you could get a paper route and earn enough to buy a sandwich without asking your parents for money or a ride to the deli. Riding a bike was a rite of passage. No matter how many times you got grease on your pants, no child ever said, “I wish I had never owned a bicycle.”

Whereas young people today who spend more time looking at social media on their phones than we ever did riding bikes, frequently opine, “I wish I never had a smartphone.”

I’m not pointing out (for the umpteenth time) the dangers neurological, emotional, and academic, of kids ubiquitously mesmerized by their glowing rectangular jailers. Happy adolescents are who are “forced" to go to summer camp where they are—again forced—to interact with other actual humans squawk vociferously about giving up their phones before relishing every hour of sunshine, swimming, acting, interacting, communicating, and creating. After one day of not having the devices, the kids are over-the-moon happy to be free, to be in the moment. Hello, Muddah, Hello Faddah, indeed.

Addiction is about dopamine and smart phones are about addiction. Making plans to have lunch, exchanging memes, doomscrolling, sending photos of your dessert, it’s all about not being where you are, who you’re with, content in your own space.

Being in the majority doesn’t mean you’re right. Ask any of a thousand flies swarming around decaying flesh. Helping your beloved children stay out of cell phone prison may make you a pariah, but it doesn’t make you wrong. Simply stated, it’s a competition. In this corner, sunshine, puppies, rainbows, and real life. And coming over the hill, a well-financed, brilliantly-researched army of addictive programmers. I’m not even referencing middle schoolers a year away from their first kiss having access to explicit sexual images that can never be unseen. I’m talking about your child’s brain—limit one to a customer--;being exposed to and taken over by people whom you’ve never met and who have agendas that do not match with yours.

So you’re at war. You are outspent, outsmarted, out gunned. You are one loving parent. You are up against an entire array of intelligences, flesh-and-blood as well as artificial. There is only one of you, there are uncounted thousands of them.

But you have something that no programmer can ever obtain. You have that magical connection with your child. You—and only you—can provide a “real life” for your beloved offspring that is more fulfilling, more interesting, and more productive than all the social media out there.

You’re at war? You have other constraints on your time other than being the phone police? Good. Get over yourself. It is said that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. Being the best parent you can be is an ongoing commitment.

So time to stop reading this affirming blog. Time to turn off your computer. Time to have your kid put down their smart phone. I don’t care how many times the TV comes back on. Later you can shoot me an email letting me know what you and your beloved child did together without technology. Go make some memories. Because, who knows? Maybe a hundred years from now, somebody's television will jump back on to “Little House Without Violent Video Games”—starring you!