Chapter Twenty-One: Are We Turning Into Data-Eating Zoombies?
Photo by McKaela Taylor on Unsplash
November 21, 2020
Dear Diary,
I am taking advantage of a quiet moment in the house to write to you. As soon as the children wake up, I will be subjected to an incessant barrage of text messages and group FaceTime calls, all from contacts who are unrecognizable to me, but who manage to temporarily freeze all my devices nonetheless. You see, Tyler, Olivia and I all share the same Apple ID, which means we all receive each other’s text messages and telephone calls. Not only do the children have far more friends than I, but they also text in the most wasteful of ways that reveal their generational privilege. Today’s kids have never known the struggle of a limited data plan, smh.
After suffering through months of interrupting pings and pongs, I successfully figured out how to mute alerts to their group chats. My relief was short-lived, however, because the children seem to delight in creating spinoff groups comprised of all of the same people - but titled slightly differently - such that I spend most of my day muting whatever the newest iteration is. As for the Group FaceTime calls, I have no clue how to mute those and they are irritating as hell. If I decline the call, a group of 18 children simply repeatedly “spam” call me until someone finally answers. I am starting to suspect that this is all a ploy to break us down so we give Tyler and Olivia their own cellphones before their thirteenth birthdays and, dagnabbit, it is working.
Years ago, when we decided the children should be thirteen before receiving their first cell phone, our rationale was that we didn’t want them to overindulge in screen time before such an age as they could more responsibly limit themselves. The idea of them spending most of their day glued to their phones like zombies was a fate we wished to avoid. Having already parented Amy Beth through her teenage years, we felt strongly that we knew best.
When this all began back in March, I decided not to stress about how much time they were spending on their devices as there was no way around their schooling without them, and there was no alternative mode of communicating with their friends safely. The longer this goes on, however, the more Hubby and I fear that they are becoming horribly addicted. We see them losing interest in going outside and playing actual real-live games, in favor of video games in online portal communities. Worst of all are the endless YouTube videos hosted by the most inane people whose voices literally hurt my ears. It’s super hard to figure out how to maintain balance right now, and to maintain the faith that this prolonged episode is not permanently damaging their psyches.
Likewise, watching the documentary The Social Dilemma has only served to further exacerbate our anxiety. Diary, this documentary does an excellent job of highlighting the insidious nature of artificial intelligence and its role in our collective screen addition. Yet, it doesn’t offer any good solutions for how to combat this. Short of selling all our belongings, moving off the grid, and embracing nature in a way that is incompatible with our family’s temperament (neither Hubby, nor I, hunt or fish), what are we supposed to do?
With infections rising exponentially, we keep them inside to keep them safe, but are we simply trading one disease for another?
Very truly yours,
Maya