How we've kept our kid off her phone (so far...)🤳

A small parenting win worth sharing.

My daughter turns eleven next month. She has access to a phone - a smartphone - and has done since we started letting her go to and from school on her own and to the local playground.

The smartphone previously belonged to my wife and has all the family controls enabled on it including tracking so we can give her the freedom all children need to roam whilst keeping an eye on her from a distance. She has no social media, the phone is not allowed in her room at night and we check her WhatsApps periodically and ask her about the types of conversations she has on there to ensure nothing nefarious is going on. We have used the phone specifically to give her freedom and independence since the age of around nine and for that I am grateful.

The other thing I am grateful for is that my daughter could not be less interested in her phone. She constantly forgets to charge and bring it with her. I hear it buzz on the charging table (where I put it), as messages pile up that she cannot be bothered to answer. She has never asked to be allowed on social media and, on the odd occasion I have offered to purchase a game for her so she can avoid watching those interminable mobile ads she always says, “Nah, it’s fine daddy.” In this post, I shall attempt diagnose why and how my wife and I achieved this, taking credit for those things within our power as parents and acknowledging those that aren’t. Let’s go!

Photo by Tony Lam Hoang on Unsplash

I think it all began way before the phone and the child, when I was prepping for her arrival. I read somewhere that if you want your offspring to engage with books, music, films and other artful artifacts you must have them about the house and within reach of tiny hands. This rings true for me. I remember, as a littl’n, being obsessed with a colourful vinyl in my dad’s collection, kept in the bottom cupboard of a display cabinet closest the floor. I would frequently extract it, open up the gatefold and stare at the double-wide image of four mustachioed men in citrus coloured satin suits, trying to copy it onto sheets of scrap paper using highlighters to match the acid tones of their finery. As I grew I turned the album over and discovered reams of lyrics on the backside, which I had never seen before but which fascinated me.

Eventually, of course, I grew tall enough to reach the record player and put the album on. It was ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ by The Beatles and it blew my damn mind igniting a deep and abiding love of music that I indulge to this day. But I was drawn to the album long before I heard it because of the beauty of the physical object, which is why I stack my home with records, books, CDs, DVDs, postcards, paintings, little sculptures and niknaks that my daughter is welcome to pick up and play with at any time barring a couple of very special editions (such as my signed copy of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’).

However, it is no use possessing these things if you don’t demonstrate how to use them and the joy of engaging with them, which is why my child will often find me reading or listening or watching without distraction, my phone performatively placed in another room. It is also why we have regularly scheduled movie nights, not every week, but a couple times a month where take turns to select a movie, respect each other’s choices, and watch them in full together. Now she can watch 2-hour+ films without moving. She listens to Taylor Swift and Black Pink albums in their entirety without changing track every thirty seconds and, recently, I have even caught her reading for pleasure on a couple of occasions 😮.

Speaking of reading, I have read aloud to my daughter nearly every night since her birth and, increasingly, I encourage her to read next to me; a silent but companionable shared activity. I want to her to be story-literate, in command of her own attention and with a thorough grasp of comprehension so that she can imagine and articulate her own stories as well as others.

Finally, my wife and I both try - often feebly - to use our phones mindfully at home rather than keep glancing at them whilst doing other things. When we do have our phones out we try to say aloud what we are doing on them e.g. reading the papers or watching a video essay or listening to a history podcast, so my daughter learns more positive ways to put her technology to use.

However, there is one major factor that my wife and I cannot take any credit for and which gives me a modicum of hope for the future of our species and that is; my daughter is simply not very impressed with screens. She finds them dull. She observes my wife and I, who both often work from home, staring at our respective laptops, looking bored or annoyed but rarely overjoyed, and is underwhelmed. She, like all of Gen Alpha, was born into a world wallpapered with screens. What was once a novelty to us is a mundane reality to her. She’s never known a world without black mirrors large and small mounted on walls and weighing down pockets, hence they lack any allure. Given the choice she would far rather practice her gymnastics, make cardboard cat houses for our moggy Marlin, take her skateboard to the playground and hang out with her girl gang in person (whom I have also never observed on their phones when taking one of my surreptitious walks past their spot in the park), because nothing seems quite as boring to her as staring at a screen.

As AI attempts to automate away everything and anything interesting about our jobs and hobbies - not because it’s better but because it’s lowering standards and costs - the backlash that is already well underway will accelerate as new generations born into an averaged out world of machine made mediocrity will realise they have been robbed. As parents we need to make sure, when that realisation dawns, that we can show our children an alternative in the shape of physical art and media that will surprise and delight them all over again.

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To Do List

My recommendations for new things to read, watch, look at, listen to and do this week:

• Former-Google-Design-Ethicist-turned-tech-industry-whistleblower Tristan Harris launched The Human Movement this week, seemingly in conjunction with his new film The AI Doc. The manifesto film, below, looks very much up our collective strasse so I have signed up early and will share updates as I get them. (Oh, and if you’re wondering, that’s Peter Gabriel’s stirring cover of Bowie’s Heroes on the soundtrack.)

• Meta and YouTube were, this week, found liable in a landmark social media addiction trial that proves the tech giants set out to addict users, which could lead to massive class action lawsuits all round 🍾 READ ON CNA.

• Softerfields is a Singaporean listening club that puts together leftfield listening parties at the legendary Snakeweed Studios. On 7th April I will be joining them for an evening centred on the music of Kino and a selection of Soviet and Russian post-punk. Come make new friends: GET TICKETS.

  They’ve also put together a cracking little ambient playlist on Spotify to get you in the mood:

Right, that'll do ya! Cheers, Nx