Our Kids Are in Trouble: The Blue Screen of Addiction
Why Our Kids Are in Trouble: The Blue Screen of Addiction
Something is happening to our children. Something that most of us know is not good for them, and yet we feel powerless to stop it. I see it in the worried faces of parents. I read about it in the latest studies. I hear about it in the news every day. And I watch it unfold in the lives of children, starting as young as nine or ten, and stretching all the way through adolescence and young adulthood.
They are being hypnotized by what we call the blue screen.
That screen has many names and many shapes. It’s the iPhone they can’t stop checking. It’s the tablet glued to their hands. It’s the television, the computer game, the laptop. It’s every form of modern technology that invites them to sit alone and stare into a glowing window, believing they’re connected while actually drifting further away from real life.
\Even in schools where phones are banned from classrooms, the screens are still there. Computers sit on every desk, built into the very way that learning now happens. And though this might make learning more efficient, something else is being lost. What’s disappearing is something simple and profoundly human: face-to-face connection.
When I was growing up, our lives outside of school were full of motion and noise and play. We poured into the streets once the school year ended, especially in summer, inventing games, running up and down the block, laughing, arguing, teaming up and falling out, only to regroup the next day. We played stickball and punchball, we shot hoops in the schoolyard, we chased each other through alleyways and courtyards, learning how to be with each other, how to work things out, how to grow.
That kind of direct, living social experience is being replaced by a digital one. Children are “hanging out” on platforms instead of in person. They’re messaging, not talking. They’re scrolling, not playing. And when conflict arises online, there’s no face to soften it. No tone of voice. No gesture of kindness. Only cold words and images. This is where cyberbullying happens. And worse than that, it is where loneliness begins.
We are seeing a rise in anxiety and depression in children and teens, and it's not hard to see why. They are growing up in a world filled with artificial light but emotional darkness. They are physically less active and socially more isolated than any generation before them.
And children are not immune to what they hear and see. They worry about the environment. They worry about war. They worry about their parents losing jobs or struggling to pay the bills. They are frightened by school shootings. They are burdened with fears that no child should carry.
Add to all of this the growing use of alcohol and drugs among youth, and it becomes hard to avoid the painful truth: our children are in trouble.
What’s heartbreaking is that we, as a society, are not doing enough to help. We look away. We distract ourselves. We hope it will all work out somehow. But children cannot raise themselves in a digital world without guidance, without presence, without love that shows up in person, not in pixels.
If we want to help them, we have to show up. We have to put down our own screens and listen. We have to invite them to talk. We have to let them be bored so they can be creative. We have to reintroduce the beauty of walking, of play, of simply being with others. And maybe, just maybe, we need to be brave enough to say no to the endless blue glow.
One important thing that parents can do for their kids is to enroll them in sports activities:
"1. Sports help improve kids’ mental health
Staying active through sports also positively affects kids’ mental
2. Sports help kids make friends and learn social skills
3. Participating in sports gives kids the opportunity to meet new people and build friendships with their teammates. From the first practice on, they learn and work together with a common purpose. Additionally, seeing teammates on a consistent basis and collecting shared experiences during a season helps foster strong bonds."
Credit: https://www.upward.org/how-youth-sports-help-kids-5-important-benefits/
Their future is not on a screen, but the blue screen is in their eyes. And they are looking to us for help.
