Have We Become Our Parents’ Guardians?

In the internet’s stormy seas,

Somewhere just short of connection.

Trying to Depend Less on Phones:

I have sought earnestly, and largely successfully, to significantly reduce my phone use. In large part it is because of the poisonous connection it sustains to the internet. I no longer sleep with my phone as I used to, and I have ceased bringing it downstairs when going to dinner.

This said, I am not immune to doom-scrolling – few of us are. But when I do it, it is at least not antisocial. I will occasionally lie in bed at night and scroll until 2am (when I am done it goes on my desk on the other side of the room, or on the floor, flung away), but I am not ignoring anyone to do this. I violate no sacred rule. I am not a hypocrite. I am just a bit flawed, and we are all that. We can forgive each other this. But I wish we were all pulling the same way.

I don’t write this with bitterness, though I do find the subject matter a frustration. It’s not that I resent helping or protecting the older members of my family from what is, to them, very much uncharted waters. But in it I do find a source of deep frustration nevertheless, and I wanted to explore that here. It got me thinking: are we children becoming our parents’ guardians?

Wisdom – Of The Elders, or The Child?

It marks an interesting contrast to their time, I think. When they grew up many of them could count on the wisdom of their elders for guidance that helped them navigate life. Things were not so alien between one generation that all of it, at any rate, had been rendered alien to them and thus their advice useless. But it feels like the rise of the internet has managed to break that chain. I find that I, the child, am giving my elders sober advice about how to use the internet. I scam-check links for them like they used to check the road for me before we crossed. I fix tech problems like they used to fix my broken toys. I find things online for them that they can’t find, like they used to find my clothes for me.

What worries me is that they have become weak to resist the poison of the internet. Two members of my family have been affected by this particularly; one is constantly reading low-quality clickbait ‘journalism’, often only as far as the headlines before forming galvanised opinions on complex topics with virtually no capacity to sustain even the slightest challenge. Another has become addicted to doom scrolling, consuming as we all well know content that is catastrophically more stupid, frustrating, and immoral than any sane mind should be subjected to.

But in writing this I hear the echoes of an older voice that I do not agree with. It was once held socially if not by every individual, that women ought not to read for fear of their delicate and pure nature being violated by the content of the books. The view today would be deeply unpopular, among many other reasons, because it feels so very paternalist. What of the intelligence of the woman to discern between good and bad? And even failing that, shouldn’t we have more regard for her free will?

Paternalism and Free Will:

What do I find myself saying here? In essence, that I distrust in the intelligence of my elders to discern between good and bad ideas on the internet, or to be vigilant enough to keep themselves safe from scammers and so on. And yet they aren’t; they’ve believed falsehoods, disregarded provable truths, and been stung by scams. In whatever ways my elders might have doubted my ability to safely cross roads, or to find my own clothes, ultimately I triumphed in every endeavour. There once came a time when I even bathed myself alone, and didn’t drown. I’ve never been run over crossing a road. I’ve never gone out into public without clothes for the want of being able to find any. And in this way we are not the same. I rose to the challenges of my time with their guidance because they’re the same challenges they rose to, with their parents’ guidance, and way back it goes. In this I really think the internet is different – it is an alien challenge to every generation except ours.

And I don’t like how that sounds. And I’m not sure they would either. But I cannot renounce the truth of it.

The Overtone of Arrogance:

I can’t stop wondering who I really am to say these things, though. Haven’t I essentially passed judgement over the capacity of my elders? Isn’t there a spectacular arrogance in this? And isn’t it rooted, fundamentally, in a yearning for control? It is not that I want to scorn them for this engagement or that I want to violate their free will by disallowing them to continue, but yes, I do. I dearly want that they never read stupid clickbait articles again, and earnestly wish they’d forever lose access to YouTube shorts, or whatever rubbish Facebook has got going on too.

Indeed, I feel like these poisons have changed them and I mourn that – in the ways that it has made them more angry, more partisan, more ignorant, but also more distant, boring (by way of lack of interest in things, or in interesting things to talk about) and more lethargic. In my mind what I want is, surely, control? I want it in the same way I would want a tumour cut out of them, so that they can live again. But in this case it means revoking their choice because between a slow conversation over an unremarkable week, and the dopamine rush of social media, I can’t see them ever choosing me.

The hurt is compounded by the fact that the phone doesn’t feel hurt by them when they look away, or mishear, or even don’t hear what was said. But I do. The phone doesn’t miss them in their absence. But I do. The phone doesn’t care if they are happy or not… but I do.

The Sting of Hypocrisy:

I think what sharpens this pain is the issue of hypocrisy too. I was always raised strictly that no phones were allowed at the table, but these two relatives – once the enforcers of this great standard – now themselves violate it. The power difference makes it very hard to challenge. They can always refute my complaint with “my house, my rules”, and if they felt it necessary to remind me that I am not in charge here, I couldn’t deny it. But it does affect me. They don’t listen as well as they did. They ignore conversations, or break into them clumsily because they aren’t conscious anymore of their surroundings. I might be talking to someone else and mention a name, only for an abrupt and abrasive “who?” or “what?” to chime in during a brief break from the Attention Thief. But no sooner has one of us, irritated, answered the query than they are sucked right back in, made slave again by big tech.

The Lack of Peace:

Perhaps more selfishly, what annoys me about it too is just the racket. These short clips are emotional whiplash to the viewer, to be sure, but they are auditory whiplash to the hapless bystander, too. I spend so very much of my time these days with noise-cancelling headphones on when at my computer because there is just no relent from the noise. It’s not that it’s deafeningly loud, but it is depressingly constant and, like the dreary hum of engines and tires on a motorway, it’s fatiguing. But it is worse by its lack of consistency in pitch or temper, and this makes it distracting.

We’re pretty good, as humans, at ignoring constant noises. The generator while camping, the car on a journey, etc., are all tiring but they don’t make conversation or thought impossible. But sitting, hoping for peace, to read or to write something, is an exercise in futility when one moment I have the not-quite-distant-enough-to-ignore sound of a go-pro crashing through ice in a ‘YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I WALKED OVER THIS FROZEN LAKE WITH LEAD SHOES AND AN INFLATED EGO’ clickbait video, followed by cheering audiences and angry orators at a rally, followed by an insufferable trending song, etc. Each change is different enough – amplified by the inconsistency in volume too – that I am always conscious of the noise, and forever distracted as a result.

Without those headphones, I would most assuredly have become very, very much more bitter about this. It annoys me enough in the short time I’m able to hear it before I voluntarily deafen myself.

I Don’t Know How To Change It:

I think what compounds the tragedy is that I don’t know how to solve this. The phone has replaced hobbies and interests for people who lack the sustained attention, effort, and will to engage with something more substantial. It has made entertainment feel more rewarding in the short term than challenge or connection. It has perfectly ‘solved’ the issue of boredom at the expense of one’s own development. It accomplishes precisely nothing, forever and for always, but is able to trick us into feeling pleasure, rewarding us for our weakness. It has begun to enslave us.

We are working for the sick and sordid hands of big tech who have yet again found another invasive way to destroy the bedrock of society – the family. And they have done it in a way that is so subtle and painless for the stolen relative that they do not notice their chains. To leave the house for 8+ hours a day is too obvious; too keenly felt. So they leave you in the house creating the illusion of being home, and instead steal your mind. A loss, like dementia, that is suffered so very much more by those closest to the victim than the victim themselves.