I had a nightmare last night. It involved eating lots of Tylenol gummies (I don’t even think anything like that exists, because if it did, it would be very very stupid) and consuming large amounts without realizing I was poisoning myself. I woke up terrified that I needed to go to the hospital and have my stomach pumped. My interpretation the next morning? I am worried about something that seems benign at first but is actually anything but.
It makes sense judging what has been on my mind alot lately. I’ve been better about limiting my kids’ technology consumption, but there are new dangers that have come to light recently that I didn’t even know existed. I’m scared. Very very scared.
After my last post about too much screen time, I went looking for an app that would help me limit my kids’ usage, so they wouldn’t be on their phone all day long. February Chanie thought the biggest problem with technology was the amount of it my kids’ consume. Oh, February Chanie, how naive you were.
On the recommendation of a friend, I tried Bark, an app that promised me many of the things I wanted. It took me awhile, but after multiple text chats and one long zoom call with a Bark representative, I finally realized Bark’s strength lay not in their screen time settings, but in their monitoring, a word I had never heard about in this context until now.
Allow me to explain.
With their app downloaded on both my kids’ phone, my phone, and my computer, Bark would comb their emails, text messages, YouTube history, whatsapp messages for anything concerning – from bullying, sexual content, violence, even potential mental illness signs. After a few hours, I received 18 separate alerts on my phone for my oldest son. With fear and trepidation, I opened the app and read each alert – a bullying alert flagged by someone in his group chat jokingly calling another boy a liar, a violence alert triggered by a rather raucous high five routine recorded by him and his brother. I breathed a little easier, but also realized this was a whole new concern I hadn’t even thought about.
It wasn’t just the amount of technology they were consuming, it was what they were doing during that time that I should really be concerned about.
I joined a Facebook group dedicated to helping parents like me make sense of it all. The posts were scary. Stories of kids lured away from their homes by what they thought were kids their age, but were actually predatory men much older than them. Accidental exposure to porn that turned into an addiction. Bullying going on right under parents’ noses.
Suddenly, I went from blocking the water from a small leak entering my house to realizing the leak was from a waterfall – no – ten waterfalls pouring straight into my living room. It was like the water was from the ocean and my house was the beach. It was impossible for the water not to touch it.
It’s funny how the switch flips when our kids get older. Our instinct when they are young is to protect, protect, protect – don’t let them run into a busy street, keep the medications out of reach, cover the outlets.
Once they are old enough to interface with the world on their own terms, it switches from protect to educate and empower. They are going to interact with the outlets and busy streets – so my job is to teach them what to do in those circumstances.
It seems Herculean at best, completely impossible at worst.
I can’t control everything they see or come into contact with, especially when they venture out of the house – to school or to friends. It all feels like too much of a burden to bear, and sometimes I feel like giving up completely.
A verse from Ethics of our Fathers sheds light on the situation in a way I never thought of before: It is not up to us to complete the work of perfecting the world, but we are not free to desist from it.
I must keep trying to plug the leak, to put the water back in the ocean. Even if it doesn’t seem like I’m doing much of anything productive at all, I am not free to desist from trying.
So I set the limits where I can. I try. I don’t allow electronics in their bedrooms. All games have been deleted from my kids’ phones. They won’t waste their time – at least not on my watch. I toe the impossible line of being just strict enough that my kids follow my rules, but flexible enough that they don’t feel the need to rebel. In the meantime, it’s up to me to educate them so that when they are faced with the nefariousness of the internet, they can make the right decision. Close the browser, turn off the iPad. Tell me what’s going on.
Am I doing it right?
I’ll get back to you in 7-8 years.
I can’t contain the ocean, but for now, I will keep on filling buckets and pouring the water back where it belongs.