This article is about parents who try to give the best to their children, and teenagers who don't understand their parents. Mutual incomprehension is as old as Methuselah, the law of life. But now the big problem, of course, is mobile.
Suddenly, social awareness has exploded about the addictive power of screens, something that we could have already sensed long before, when Steve Jobs denied the iPhone to his pubescent children. We have had a collective tremor that is spread via WhatsApp or Telegram and, eureka, we have already found the magic solution.
Ban cell phones before 16.
Something like what was done with tobacco, only in the case of the telephone there are two powerful barriers: the resistance of indomitable technology companies and the unstoppable advance of the digital society.
That motive as bad as heroin is the same one that is omnipresent in our lives. We've allowed Zuckerberg into the kitchen, and he's stolen our cookie jar. That cell phone is the same one we gave to the kid for his birthday to know, how deluded we are, where he is at all times (and so as not to hear him complain). The same one that you, supposedly an exemplary father or mother, hang around all day long.
That is the motive of a thousand demons.
Let's see who is the champion who now takes it away from the child with the revolutionized hormones or convinces him to replace it with a 'dumb' mobile phone, the kind that only serves to call or receive calls. Oh, it's not the same cell phone: not even Tato wants this one.
Suddenly society has realized that a child cannot drive a large displacement motorcycle without his feet reaching the ground and without knowing the traffic signs. They crash on curves, and there are a lot of them. Let's change the metaphor of the motorcycle to that of a firearm and boy will our legs shake.
Being in those mass groups of parents, let's say, "anti-mobile" has a cathartic effect and surely relieves family tensions. Although in reality it hides a surrender because it allows us to externalize a responsibility that many parents have abdicated at home.
From the evil of many, to "if we don't all do it...".
Join this Fuenteovejuna of distressed families, there would be more to go. The debate enriches. But then ask yourself how much time you have spent this week communicating with your child, not just on WhatsApp. To speak. It is enough for a teenager to imagine others prettier and happier than her for her to think that her existence is shit. Don't let you be the last to know.
Teenagers are uncomfortable, selfish, unpredictable, dark beings... Also surprising if you listen to them. The bad news is that they have organized their lives and socialization around the mobile phone. Honestly, I think we are too late to prohibit, not to try to get to know our children. Of course, it is always easier to throw in the towel or hide behind others.
