I hate technology! Hate it, hate it, hate it.
But what I hate more than technology is the CONFLICT that technology generates.
Or at least, the conflict that it generates within my family. Maybe everybody else in all the other families in the world has it sussed.
My children have phones. Well, Mini doesn’t, because she’s mini. And even though she starts secondary school next year, I am putting her phone off for as long as possible, because in the past, I have ridiculously bought into the idea that once children go to secondary school, they absolutely NEED a phone.
Er no they don’t! Why was I such a fool? Kids spend the day in school, where they are not allowed to use their phones, then get on a bus home, and have but a short walk until they are back. Hopefully. Where, within that itinerary, does it allow phone use opportunities? Nowhere. I have been duped.
And where, indeed, does it stipulate that I should supply not just a phone, but a SMART bloody phone? Ditto, NOWHERE. So why did I think it was appropriate to impecune myself and go ahead and get iphones for all of my secondary aged children? Why?
Oh how I wish I’d stuck to my guns and given them all a Nokia brick! With those, you can call, you can text. You cannot watch TikTok, and you cannot “ask me anything” and end up getting into hot water when your mate nicks your blower and types something filthy on your “story”.
Back in 2015, I think I was so keen to give Number One a smart phone because I was terrified. She was the first child I had to let out of my sight, into the scary world out there, off on the bus to big school. She was only little! And she didn’t know many people. But even she had a cast-off, my old relic of an iPhone, and we couldn’t work it very well. It did the job just enough for me to be able to track her whereabouts (if sporadically) and it helped us all feel a bit braver.
But it took several years before that phone became anything more to her than just a phone. She left it on buses, forgot to turn it on, and was really not that bothered.
I messed it up with Number Two, though. She was far too young when I gave her a cast-off phone. Still in Year 5! What was I thinking? But she’d moved schools, and it was a way for her to keep in touch with the friend she’d left behind. Again, this cast-off device was not exactly all singing, all dancing, but I have NEVER heard the end of it since from Boy Seymour, who remembers exactly when his sister prematurely got her phone, and holds it against me.
Boy Seymour is the epitome of a device monster. He loves anything techy: wires, cables, black plastic things that have leaky batteries, and phones. Especially phones. I can’t recall exactly how and when Boy came to have a phone. I suspect it was around his eleventh birthday, when he was in Year Six and Christmas had just passed. But he has always known just how to work the things, what settings to use, how to save the battery and when is best to charge stuff. He has his phone on him when I have forgotten mine and need one. He is good at answering when people ring.
But he is also terribly naughty.
You ask Boy to get off a phone, he doesn’t. You take Boy’s phone away for the good of his health, he steals it back. He sits hunched over his device, dooming his posture, for far too long, and his little eyes devour the feast of YouTube nonsense or whatever other shizzle his screen is spewing at him in a continuous torrent of visual vomit.
I HATE IT!
We have tried to reason with him. He nods sagely, makes agreeable noises and… carries on as before. We enforce phone-free time, and he shouts. The arguments we have had recently are legendary. And before long, Big Seymour and I are at war over the whole phone situation, forgetting we are on the same side. He thinks I am soft. (I ain’t soft.) And whilst we parents are arguing over precisely how many times we should have to ask before the phone is handed over, Boy has probably snuck in unseen and stolen the phone back again. If it wasn’t so infuriating it’d be hilarious. He’s a ninja.
And it’s not just the phones. Just when we thought we might be finding a balance with devices and working out the best way to manage it all, we are told we absolutely MUST purchase iPads for our secondary school children! No choice in the matter. We had an old iPad (it’ll be ten next August, bless it!) and it was holding up well. It was slow, but it was usable. Just. It was another device I had to monitor, but so slow that it wasn’t of the greatest appeal – kind of perfect. But no, we had to buy two more, NEW ONES, to “aid the children’s learning”.
And now we get to argue about those, too. The percentage of time actually spent on home learning with these iPads is pitiful. Boy mainly watches motorbikes on his. And then there’s Minecraft.
It turns out that I was also duped here, too, for iPads are no longer being peddled as compulsory, but advisable. And kids can borrow them from the school office if they are left without.
I should have made a stand and refused to partake in this ridiculous, money-making gimic.
Quite frankly, I am exhausted with the same old arguments. I know I need to chill out. “Technology is the way forward”, blah blah blah. And I agree. It is. The technological advances we have made in recent years are mind-blowing. In medicine and in research, in travel and in the way we are now able to work so remotely -it’s all grand. I know. School iPads are a massive help for children who might have additional needs – Mini will certainly benefit from the one we will inevitably have to buy for her. Kids need to be able to use these things – if they can avoid being as clumsy with “compooters” as I am, that’s a bonus. Only this morning I have tried to get my printer to work with the only strategy I have – witchcraft. Seriously. I’d bought new ink cartridges (twice – the first ones were wrong) and a pack of paper, I had plugged it all in, checked connections and linked it up to wi-fi and… nothing. So I did a spell. And that didn’t work either.The number of hours I have wasted not understanding how such things work is scary. Maybe my kids will avoid this, at least.
And so what now? I will try to chill out, but I have not given up entirely. If I do, I genuinely fear I will end up with degenerate children. Last Thursday night, we had a meeting, and made a list of rules to obey. It was long. It was confusing.
It failed.
By Monday night, Boy’s phone was in detention again.
Last night, we simplified the list. We now have 5 clear rules to follow. Everyone signed the paper. We are all on board. I feel buoyed.
Do I though? Do I really? I do not think this will solve arguments,for there will always be arguments. Because even after a rare argument-free evening and a peaceable pre-school morning, it all went wrong when the two small ones spied a sign saying “FREE STUFF” in someone’s garage on the way to school. I told them not to go rummaging, but they went regardless, and came back at war because Mini had found a teeny weeny replica pistol, and Boy had seen it first.
FFS.
Suggestions and amendments welcome! I NEED HELP!
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