Kids … online!
The truth about what kids are doing
It’s been 8 months now since the lockdown started. Kids stopped going out and the new normal has become to do everything online. Kids screen time has grown exponentially in every household and almost every parent I talk to has the same exasperated expression when we talk about the amount of time their child spends on the phone. Among Us, Roblox, Brawl Stars and several other online games have now become the new best friends as our children spend their entire day with these digital friends. So much so that when they are without it, they practically are like fish out of water — clueless about what to do, restless and just waiting to get back into it. Screen time boundaries set by parents are being broken everyday and there is literally nothing that can be done about it.
We used to talk about the need for digital deaddiction as an impending threat. Now its real. Its happening and we are clueless how to go about it. Children hear their parents scream at them but its like their ears are deafened to the shouting. The images and story that’s running on the screen has them so absorbed that whatever the parents say, even with their deafening and thunderous voices seems to glide over and they are back to their comfort with their ‘best friends’.
In online classes too, I am not sure how many parents have noticed, but it is common that children are attending classes in one window while the other window has YouTube or some chat session running. So many messages are exchanged between the kids even during school hours and the talks would be around anything but the topic that’s being taught in school. Given that they have the devices in their control during school time, there is no option to avoid this as well.
Is this all wrong? Is this the new normal? How much of this do we accept and how much do we fight. There’s an old saying ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’. We even tried getting involved with the kids to see what their games are and what keeps them so hooked onto it. Call it ‘generation gap’ but we couldn’t stay with it more than a few hours!
After having played all the indoor games, having done all the possible activities within the constraints imposed by the virus and finally exhausting all the options, the one thing that has continued to keep the kids engrossed are the screens. We have lost the final game and the screens have won. If anyone has been successful in getting a different result, please comment in the comments section and share your wisdom!
Thank you for reading!
