Yes, we’re all addicted to our cellphones. Our smartphones, to be exact. I barely remember using a flip phone and I have zero recollection of ever using a pay phone, but I’m sure it happened in the age of parachute pants and Bryan Adams. And while it’s hard for me to recall the days when I wasn’t checking my iPhone every 32 seconds, my kids will never know anything different. They’ve grown up in an era in which instant everything is literally in the palms of their little hands.
And before I go on, a quick, loud and emphatic parental plea: Please quit buying your little darlings a cellphone before they get out of elementary school. They. Do. Not. Need. One.
There’s simply no debating point that’s going to change my mind, so don’t even try. No elementary school student needs to text or call anyone to talk about his LEGO collection or her latest crayon creation, so please quit putting pressure on all of the other elementary school parents by giving your 9-year-old an iPhone … thanks.
I’ve read that today’s smartphone has more computing power than what was used on Apollo missions. That either means today’s smartphones are awesome or the Apollo missions were the most dangerous events in the history of man. But, sure, smartphones are awesome. I love, like and now depend on mine. I’m scared, though, that anyone under the age of 21 is going to have to go to some sort of trade school after college just so they know how to communicate with something besides their fingers.
I constantly watch my 14-year-old daughter spend basically every waking moment on her iPhone. She’s either playing a game, on Instagram following Selena Gomez’s every move, or she’s texting a friend about what to wear to the thing at the place where that guy will be. Do I turn to her first when something goes wrong with my phone? Yes, of course I do. Yet the addiction is real, and every parent I know is going through the same thing. We’re all sick and tired of seeing only the tops of their heads at the dinner table or sitting on the couch.
So what can we really do other than the most obvious, which is not to give them a phone in the first place?
One parent I know made a small wooden “Be Present” box that he forces his daughter to put her phone into before every family meal.
Another turns to “interval” training when it comes to homework – 30 minutes of studying without using any technology then 30 minutes with technology.
Then there’s the dad who makes everyone in the family put their phones in the middle of the table when they eat out. The first one who touches a phone during dinner has to pay for dinner. That would be pretty tough on my 9-year-old, but his two teenagers both have jobs, so it works for them.
I commend these parents for trying to put up a good fight. But at the end of the day, we’re all defending the Alamo, and the army outside the walls is too many and too relentless. Did you know the average teen sends 3,339 text messages a month? And 3,338 of those messages were either stupid smiley faces or the letters LMAO. Did you know 42 percent of teens admit they can text while blindfolded? Well, a skill is a skill, so I’ll take it.
So where does the future point us? Are our kids destined to forget how to speak to one another and lose the ability to sign their names? Let’s hope not. But I have my doubts. I’ve already had two college interns quit on me via text and watched in stunned silence as another 26-year-old full-time staff member requested time off via text. The weird part was that she was requesting off the next day, and she sits in the office next to me every day. When I asked her why she failed to simply pop in and ask me in person, she looked at me as if I were the dumb old dude I guess I’ve become and said simply, “Texting is so much faster.”
LOL.
Rudy lives in Flower Mound, works in Fort Worth and plays everywhere in between. He has one wife, one daughter, one son, one published book, one obsession with sports and 20 million observations on marriage and children. Follow him on Twitter: Manifesto10.
Published February 2014
