‘It’s educational!’ As pandemic drags on, 42 hours of screen time can seem perfectly reasonable
The good news is, we’ve succeeded in reducing screen time for our kids to a mere 42 hours a week.
The bad news is ... 42 hours a week? That’s four times as much as they were doing, prepandemic.
“GET OUTSIDE, BOTH OF YOU!”
That’s what my mom would yell before banishing me and my younger brother to the backyard after lunch, then shutting the blinds and bolting the doors.
Ah, 1968, the year Vietnam War protests caught fire, Stanley Kubrick released his sci-fi masterpiece, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and little Joel and Arnold were kicked out of the house for six hours until dinner was served.
“AND DON’T BANG ON THE DOOR — BABY GLENN IS HAVING HIS NAP!”
As I write this from home, 52 years later, I hear banging on the door downstairs, where my two sons, age 10 and 12, are trying to get back in after a mere 10 minutes of playing on the backyard swing set I installed when the oldest one was six.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
As we navigate the worst pandemic of our lifetimes, the reality is that they can’t play with their friends, head to the corner store or splash in the crappy inflatable pool we hoped to buy until it became clear pools — along with bikes, basketball nets and sports equipment — are the new toilet paper, with most stores out of stock until September.
Playgrounds are closed, extracurriculars and camps cancelled or — based on social distancing directives —rendered impractical.
And after three months of virtual field trips on the living room couch and learning geometry on a TV tray, the screams of discontent have reached a feverish crescendo. “SHUT UP!”
“BACK OFF!” Forty-two hours a week? With summer beckoning like a creepy stranger on a subway platform, we’ll be lucky if that number doesn’t double by the time the leaves turn orange and the nip of autumn ushers in the pandemic’s dreaded Second Wave.
Oh, I know. We’re crappy parents. Ha, ha. Tell me something I don’t know.
But I’m not alone.
“My former pre-parent judge-y self would be appalled,” agrees Isabel Kuxdorf, whose four school-age kids have settled into a comfortable routine of video games and Netflix.
“Back when the weather was cold and awful, I blamed all the screen time on that. But in truth, even though the sun shines and the breeze blows through the meadow, it hasn’t been greatly reduced.”
Good God, Isabel, I exclaim. You’re messing up your kids’ lives, just like me.
“Yes, this generation of parents is more involved than previous ones, where children were raised by nannies and governesses — rich folks — or left to their own devices in the walking-to-and-from-schooluphill-both-ways vein — middle class and poor folks,” notes the Baden business owner.
“But still — if we shut down our Wi-Fi at home, we’d have to – God forbid – interact with each other.”
It’s not that I don’t like my kids — they are, after all, miniature versions of me.
It’s that, if I’m being really honest, I can only can only take so much of myself.
“When they’re on screens, the amount of peace and quiet we get without the constant ‘Mom, can I do this?” or ‘Dad, can you fix this for me!’ goes away,” agrees Chris Steingart, a Kitchener father of two who ruminates over “breeding a race of screen zombies.”
“There are no play dates, no social interactions — except through screens — and solitary play for a five-year-old is difficult day after day.
“So it’s a tough trade-off. If we’re ever going to get work done or take time for ourselves, “Go play in the backyard” has far less effect than “OK, you can watch YouTube!”
In our case, my sons have become adept at finding loopholes in our strict one-hour-aday screen time rule.
First, there’s distance learning on school-issued Chromebooks, which naturally gets a free pass.
Then there are TV shows with meals while mom and dad are working, which serves a practical purpose, so that gets a free pass.
Then 30 minutes — which sometimes elongates to 60 — to play math games or Prodigy, which is “educational,” so that gets a free pass.
And Dad Movie Night — where we screen ’70s classics like “Meatballs” and “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” — which is at my behest, so that gets a free pass.
Then Zoom calls with friends and relatives for socialization and mental health, so that gets a free pass.
And “active” screen time to make videos and write creative stories, which experts say is a good thing, so that gets a free pass.
And then there’s watching YouTube or playing iPad games, which is the Holy Grail of screen time and, therefore, can’t be messed with.
And then, of course, there are unexpected anomalies.
“Dad, can you sign us up for Virtual Minecraft Builders Day Camp?” my younger son begged the other day in what sounded like a telephone pitch for duct cleaning.
“We’ll need to buy a Minecraft Java Edition launcher, a working PC microphone or gaming headset, optional web camera and a CPU Intel Core i3-3200 3.2 GHz or equivalent. “What are you talking about?” I respond, searching the room for hidden cameras. “You want to go to summer camp in our living room?”
He smiles broadly: “It’s educational!”
“If nothing else comes out of this,” points out Kuxdorf, “the kids will have learned negotiation tactics, mediation skills and an uncanny ability to argue that would put a prosecutor to shame.
“This generation — albeit with a vitamin D deficiency — will, in future, be able to negotiate peace in the Middle East and finally address climate change.”
If that fails, I will call my mother — who at 83 has lost none of her feisty determination — to come over and kick them out of the house.
If she wants to shutter the blinds and bolt the doors, even better.