Taking charge

There seems to be a rash of terrible deaths in recent days. Fourteen-year-olds shooting classmates. Someone being set on fire outside a school. Such events lead the news so often that we are all becoming inured to such behaviour. Let’s call it what it is: evil incarnate. I can’t put my finger on exactly when such violence had its beginnings, but my best guess would be twenty-five years ago, about when iPhones began to become all-pervasive.
Contrast what is happening now to the days of your own youth. There was none of this. In my day (you knew I was going to get around to that phrase), we didn’t have a television at home until I was twelve and even then viewing was limited. I blame poor parenting for much of this new world. I recently saw a woman pushing what looked like a three-year-old in a pram. The little girl was clutching an iPhone and watching who-knows-what. It was probably a pointless parade of colours but isn’t that one sure way to get hooked?
Walk any busy street and most people in their twenties and early thirties are coming toward you with their eyes glued to an iPhone. Maybe they’re texting some important message, but my guess is that whatever it is, it could probably wait until after there’s no longer any risk of barging into someone.
I worry even more about the young men holed up in their bedrooms watching porn. As for their girlfriends and eventual spouses, I can’t imagine those guys will hold them at any loving level of esteem. In schools, teachers seem to find it impossible to halt iPhone use in the classroom. How much learning will occur if many student minds are elsewhere? Ontario this month took action and banned classroom use.
Changing the world even more is beyond any one person’s capacity, but how about starting at home with parents? Permissive mothers and fathers are simply not paying attention to what their children are doing and watching. Snapchat’s ceaseless messages and TikTok’s senseless videos govern kids’ lives.
Instead, why don’t parents have long talks with their children at bedtime to discover what’s going on in their minds? Why not limit their time watching both big and little screens? Why not open doors beyond social media? It’s high time parents took back control of their own offspring.