Where Are the Kids?

It strikes me pretty hard every time I’m out on a walk that I don’t see many – or sometimes any – kids out playing. Streets are empty, traffic is absent, tourism is almost nonexistent, and spring is in full swing. It’s a kid’s dream out there, or at least a pre-digital-age kid’s dream.

Maybe they’re out hiking. Maybe they’re at home painting. Maybe they’re playing chess with their grandfathers. How I hope those are just a few of the wonderful things happening out there.

But the fact that kids aren’t out playing on those vacant streets, when they were in every age before this one, frightens me.

I know they can’t play together, but kids have always been creative. Whether solo or with siblings, they could be out bicycling, frisbee-ing, hitting balls, building forts, drawing with chalk.

Sadly, I think most of them are inside, glued to screens. We will have an army of screen addicts unlike anything we ever saw before this virus. It’s easy to let kids be on screens. It’s hard to keep them off. I know. My kids have only been allowed to do Minecraft the first Saturday of each month for two hours. Two hours a month.

It would be a lot easier to let them just go for it whenever they want, but I guard them from that because of this one, overarching belief I have: the more their brains grow accustomed to easy satisfaction (coming from excited dopamine drips that happen every few seconds or minutes thanks to gaming), the more their brains will abhor doing things that require long, hard work for less exciting and immediate reward.

In other words, doing math in a quiet room for an hour or so will feel hard and unrewarding. Playing boardgames as a family will seem dull. Hanging out with grandparents and chatting for a few hours will feel like torture. I believe that simple acts of “being” will eventually make “real” life seem completely uninteresting. Like a long, dull waiting game until the next time they can get on their screen.

It’s akin to having very young children and avoiding any shows or movies that have kids with crass attitudes. Like Minecraft, the shows themselves may have been benign and rather intriguing, but if crass becomes a norm that they witness in their lives, I believe it will become their own personal norm with their own family and friends.

Our kids don’t really understand why I’ve guarded them from gaming and screens all along, as much as I explain this to them. In fact, due to the frustration our 14-year-old feels at not being given the freedom to make his own decisions in this realm, on Friday I told him he could be in charge of managing it if he manages it well. I don’t want him to feel that he has to resort to dishonesty or sneaking, and I know how glued he is to it when we give him a carte blanche day on the ferry on the way to a cross country meet, so the key is managing it well in everyday life.

Given that so many well-meaning adults I see don’t even realize what their own device use is teaching their kids, I think screen use is a monumental challenge for a kid to master. I hate this modern age for that burden on youth. They can’t even begin to imagine what they’re missing out on; so many of them don’t know what it means to sit down and truly think, uninterrupted by the pull of a screen.

Wouldn’t you know? Right when I give our teen the freedom to “manage video games well,” our WiFi and phone go out in our neighborhood. (It’s been out for a few days now, and I’m sitting in the library parking lot, gleaning their WiFi as our younger son does all of his online schooling from our car.) Normally in his free time, our teen would be watching YouTube DIYs about building and electronics, or uploading beautiful short films and photos he’s taken onto his YouTube channels. The only thing he can do on his computer now, according to him, is Minecraft. I tell him, “Managing it well means managing it well in normal times or abnormal times. Well is the key word.”

Personally, I love the effect that WiFi-less life has on my own mind. I’m thinking down neuropathways I haven’t used since I was in high school. There are things I want to make, sew, paint, write, etc. We in our family are all acutely aware now of how chained we are to our computers. I realize that all of my creativity has been put into one basket – blogging or writing on my MacBook. I feel like my life would blossom if I were to get rid of my computer. I’d call people, I’d make things for people, I’d have creative hobbies, I’d be more in tune with my neighbors’ needs, I’d write letters to my loved ones, I’d call my old friends from high school and college. Those are all the urges I’m having right now. I think life would feel more full and meaningful, rather than filled with bits of not-all-that-meaningful communication with gobs of people I never really sit down and “be” with. Would I ever even miss my computer?

I know that the last thing parents need right now are more battles to fight. No job, no money, what now – more arguing over computer use? But parents, please be mindful of what monster you may be creating in avoiding those little daily digital battles. Which price will be a higher one that you and your kids will pay in the end?