We Gave Them Phones Instead of a Childhood

I used to worry about my son playing with toy guns. When he wanted a plastic sword, I panicked; would this lead to knives? But its not a lightsaber or Thor’s hammer keeping me awake at night any-more. It’s the most dangerous toy of all; a smartphone.

Since 2012, childhood has never looked the same. Everywhere I go, heads are bowed. Not in prayer. Not in thought. Hardly ever in a book. The real world - full of bustle, colour, movement, noise - has been quietly stolen by screens. The first iPhone arrived in 2007, and within just a few short years, it replaced people as our main source of companionship. Some call it progress. Moving with the times. But this hyper-connection has created disconnection. Being reachable 24/7 has taken away all of our freedom.

I was the kid who loved school, loved reading, loved learning. I wanted to know everything about my interests, become an expert. But now, I’m overwhelmed with facts, opinions, and endless noise. I have no focus. No direction. I search for A and bypass B, taking a detour to P or W and never making it to Z. I attempt an online food shop but end up discovering what year Reese Witherspoon was born or learn a Christmas stocking hack I’ll never actually do (and feel bad about). I stumble upon videos of right-wing activists and drive myself crazy reading the comments section, convinced the world is ending. Society is anxious. I am anxious. I know too much, and yet, nothing, because its impossible to retain. Am I overreacting? Or do you see it too? I feel like I’m in a constant state of mourning what we’ve lost, especially for our children.

In recent months, I’ve been to family and friends gatherings where children are more than welcome. I remember these events as a child in the 90s; birthdays, barbecues, anniversaries. We’d go wild in a bedroom, build forts from duvets, jump on the beds. We made pacts to stay quiet so the grownups wouldn’t take us home early. Yes, there were screens - movie nights, a SNES or Sega Megadrive - but we shared, huddled around one game, taking turns and cheering each other on. Sometimes, we’d interact with the grownups, joining a game of Charades. Maybe we’d put on a play in the lounge, forcing them to watch!

Now, the vibe has changed. The children who have their own phones (or use their parents phones) just sit absorbed, still, invisible. One child sat scrolling for hours, saying nothing, barely blinking. Little ones ran around them, laughing and shouting, trying to pull them into the chaos, but the phone was too powerful. In the corner of the room, a few teens sat side by side, but lost in their own screen. Eve-ry so often, they sniggered, showed one another something funny, before diving back into their digital worlds. It was painfully sad to witness.

So how did we let this happen? We’re the grownups, the responsible ones. Surely we can pull the plug? Or would this make us absolute hypocrites?

Because the truth is, we can’t even go to the toilet without taking our phones for a sneaky browse. We’re so addicted to screens that without a second thought, we’ve opened the world to our kids. Even when we reduce TV time, say NO to the iPad in restaurants, claim there’s “no WiFi here”, or explain boldly that screens are BAD FOR YOU, we don’t practise what we preach. We contradict ourselves. We answer a few WhatsApps whilst waiting for dinner to arrive. Scroll when stuck in traffic. Fall into a hole of online shopping during a family movie.

Of course, it’s not just weakness; it’s survival. We are overworked, underpaid, feeling the eternal drain of the mental load. We are sorting car pools, birthday presents, making sure school shoes aren’t too small, taking kids to dance classes, sports clubs, gymnastics, karate, and packing the right kit the night before. When you have to do all the organisation and payments on your phone, it leaves little time to spend with a living person. Convenience has replaced conversation…unless you count chat-ting to a bot.

Think of all the people we used to see; the butcher, the baker, the newsagent. We’d chat to the bank clerk. Visit the travel agent to plan our summer hols, leaving with a smile and a bon voyage. Now, we can do all of the above in abundance before we even get out of bed in the morning. It’s magic. But it’s also tragic. Look at what its cost us. We’ve traded real human interaction for smartphones, and our children are growing up not knowing how to look up, speak up, or live without a screen.

From the moment they were born, our babies have watched us hunched over our phones, manically typing with thumbs and fingers, often one-handed as we multitask. When they call ‘Mama,’ ‘Dada,’ we tell them to wait a minute, to hang on, to let us just finish this first, our eyes glued to the blue light. We can’t resist a selfie with them. Our finger hovers over the camera, eager to capture every funny moment, every milestone, every normal thing they do which is so beautifully precious to us. Everyone else is doing it, so we must too. What kind of parents wouldn’t document their children’s entire lives? The weird ones who… didn’t?

And then, inevitably, the question comes: Can I have a phone?

Maybe we say, No.

But they have a toy kitchen. Toy food. A coffee maker, a microwave. Toy cars, fire engines, trucks. They wear a little bag across their shoulder like Mama does. How cute, they way that they copy. They set up the PlayMobil school, hospital, vet’s clinic, police station. Barbie has a camper van, a big screen TV, a phone. Yeah, Barbie has a phone.

Apparently, half the kids in their class at school have a phone.

And then, everybody. Everybody has a phone. EXCEPT ME.

We, the parents of this strange in-between generation, remember both the before and after. We started university without an email address and left with a cringe-worthy Yahoo account. We went from chat-ting on the family landline to spending hours in a maze of WhatsApp groups. We sat glued to one primetime TV programme and talked about it at school the next morning, but today, we can’t manage more than 10 minutes of a new series without checking our phones or being distracted. We went to the library. The cinema. The theatre. We spent Saturdays shopping in actual shops. Now we do all of it from one small, glowing rectangle.

I just don’t want this for my children. I don’t want them to hang out with their friends in silence. I don’t want them sucked into the bottomless pit of the internet. I want them to party, to mingle, to be silly. I want them to find answers by asking questions in real life. By reading. By exploring. I don’t want them to always choose to stay home on a screen. I don’t want this to become their only choice.

So yes, I am fearful for what comes next. What the future holds. As a parent, I want nothing more than happiness for my child, but I do wish for connection. Real, human connection. Because technology fills us with emptiness, and people fill us with love. That can’t be compared, and it shouldn’t be replaced.

I know we can’t turn back time. Instead, can we choose to look up? Put the phones down and lead by example? Can we let our children see our faces? Maybe we can learn something too, noticing that the world is still there, still spinning, and still colourful, noisy, messy and brilliant.