My oldest son, Jonah, told me that the worst thing that I ever did was give him an iPhone when he was ten years old.
I gave it to him then because he had to walk home from the middle school on his own, while I waited for his brother’s special ed bus to drop him off. I told him that I needed to know where he was and that he was okay.
He responded, saying that at age ten, he shouldn’t have watched ISIS decapitate a man’s head on a news program on his phone. He shouldn’t have snuck his phone into bed and played video games until late into the night. There’s a lot more bad stuff that happened on that phone, I’m sure. He doesn’t tell me everything.
After Charlie Kirk was assassinated earlier this month, Utah Governor Spencer Cox urged people to get away from their computers and to touch grass. He described social media as a cancer, which was fueling negativity and insanity. And we all know that.
Any parent who watched their kids rot in their bedrooms for two years during the COVID shutdown years knows that the online world is toxic. Teachers can’t teach through a computer screen. Friendships can’t blossom on a computer screen. Life on a computer is a grey substitute for the real thing.
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