I love my son but he’s obsessed with TikTok videos and I can’t stand it

BThe only kind of meaningful interaction that we have is when he looks up for a moment from the phone

efore I became a parent I don’t think I was too starry-eyed about what to expect. Enough of my contemporaries had a head-start on family-rearing to give me a pretty good idea that it wasn’t all fun and cuddles. My wife is a realist too, and she has certainly done more than her share of the child-rearing, but even so I have to say I’m disappointed by the reality.

Our son is 14 now. Years ago, changing nappies, I used to daydream that by the time we got to roughly this stage I’d be spending a lot of time outdoors, kicking a football, hiking through the woods or maybe checking out a festival or two. We’d be bonding, dad and son, over something wholesome like tractors or joinery or, I don’t know, hang-gliding. If he’d turned out artistic we’d be hanging out at Shakespeare’s Globe or Tate Modern, or having a go at woodcarving.

All ridiculous, I know, but they seemed reasonable aspirations at the time.

What is the reality? TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok.

When I walk through the door, he is welded to TikTok on his phone. I know – we have often, wearily, compared notes on this point – that my wife will have already been subjected to the videos of the day. If surgically removed to attempt some homework, he is back on it the moment that the work is “finished”. He looks at TikTok videos while he eats his supper.

The only kind of meaningful interaction that we have is when he looks up for a moment from the phone, registers my presence and then says, “Dad – you’ve got to see this…”

And we’re off... what passes for a conversation is me grunting amusement at a burping seal, surfing monkey or libidinous wallaby before he’s on to the next sequence and showing me – to his almost uncontrollable delight – a cretinous skateboarder wiping out on a concrete staircase or a rapper coming through a door walking on his hands.

Meanwhile, I can feel my brain turning to mush, and the things that I might have wanted to talk to him about – you know, football, music, training shoes, nothing too complex or intellectually challenging – drifting away on a tinny soundtrack.

I’m not an idiot. I know that this is the way that generations differ. I remember when I was about his age being similarly obsessed with the latest tech – Super Mario on the original Nintendo console, for example. Mobile phones weren’t around at that time – or not for 14-year-olds, anyway – but I certainly spent plenty of time hogging the landline to talk to my mates.

But I don’t think that I ignored real life to quite this extent, or had only one conceivable way of interacting with my parents.

Maybe I’m deluding myself. And I certainly have no doubt that our son is far from unique. When he does get together with his mates, they are all on their phones even when they are in the same room, and all passing around their latest favourite videos.

I’m not going to give them – or him – a hard time for this. Real life is not much fun at the moment. As a generation, they have had an unusually tough few years, and I reckon that by shouting and screaming and taking away the tech, we’ll only encourage a greater longing for it.

So I’ll let him get on with it, and I’ll indulge his need to show me the latest videos, and I’ll laugh along... it’s parenting, 2020s-style, and it seems ever so slightly disappointing.