Keeping our 9-year-old away from electronic devices has been a struggle since he first figured out how to work the track pad on his mother’s Mac laptop. His is a generation saturated in all things digital that finds playing a video game while listening to something on television and keeping up with friends on social media hardly distracting.
Ellis, thank goodness, is not using WhatsApp or SnapChat or whatever yet, but there will come a day soon I am sure when he will say, “Buuut all my friends are on it!” And, we, as weak-willed parents, will probably cave.
The thing is that kids are far more pleasant to be around when they are unplugged. Fighting with a preteen over whether to come to the dinner table instead of staying in Minecraft’s alternative universe is no fun at all. Time limits are hard to enforce and using various technical solutions can be problematic.
Last Sunday, however, we tried a no-digital day for everyone — no TV, no video games, no phones — and it was terrific. We played board games. We went out for lunch. We even stopped by the knitting shop in East Hampton Village to get supplies and advice on making wool hats.
As parents, it is tempting to give in, to pick up our phones to look at other people’s vacations on Instagram while our kids veg out in the other room with YouTube, but it never feels quite right. Our unplugged Sunday was a success. It would be nice if we could extend it to the rest of the week.