(Note: This one's a bit more stream-of-consciousness than I generally like my blog posts to be, I just kinda need to get this off my chest.)

So.

I'm no technophobe - I made a website, I think electronics are cool, I'm trying to learn how to build my own solar panels and code in python - but man oh man.

I've worked in education, and my current position has me occasionally overseeing a room full of families with children. By children, I mean from newborn babies up to about 12, with some very occasional teens. It's one of the reasons I'm cryptic about where I work - safety and privacy for the families, y'know.

Anyway, we have some computers and tablets in one of those rooms. They're definitely a holdover from that huge push a few years back to get digital devices into the hands of children everywhere - you remember that? Gotta make sure every kid has a laptop or a phone or a tablet, the salesmen said. They'll be left behind if you don't teach them digital literacy from day one!

I don't think that was ever really the plan. Tech CEOs and other high-up Silicon Valley Elites have been saying for years that they don't let their kids use their own products; Zuckerberg doesn't let his kid use Facebook, etc. More recently, it's become apparent that those same SVEs are hardcore on that front, too - the elite private schools their kids go to run on Waldorf programs, which doesn't allow technology greater than a chalkboard. It's the same at home, it seems: Silicon Valley nannies have revealed many of them have "no screen" clauses in their contracts. They're supposed to just take any devices from their kids if they find them, and can get fired if they use screen-bearing devices on the job.

I don't really blame them. If you've read my other posts, you know I've struggled with screen addiction - and don't fight me on that word choice. I've had "actual" (societally recognized and accepted) addictions, I've overcome substance abuse, I know the signs when I see them. I didn't even grow up glued to mobile devices; I refused to get a smart phone for a looooong time. I didn't even want a cell phone until it was practically forced on me. And it still happened. I still ended up stuck to my phone like glue.

Back to those computers and tablets. Any day I'm in here, I see kids sprint straight for them. Not every kid, of course; no population is a monolith. But enough kids. I see them sprint for the devices. If parents protest, they'll ignore them, or protest back, or negotiate, or scream and throw a fit. I've heard kids lie to their parents, seen them sneak over, seen them physically fight to be released from a guardian's grip to rush the screens. And God(s) forbid that you try to pull a child away from one; I have never seen more violence in this room than when a parent tries to remove a toddler from a screen - the kid will get loud and vicious.

Lately, I've seen people - who I assume are roughly my age, give or take 5 years - wistfully remember when "the internet was a place." They're referring to when schools had "computer rooms" or when your home computer was this big, sedentary object that took up a corner of the home office or living room. It's true that the internet very much follows us around these days. It's hard to escape from, especially in the US where you're practically expected to have a smart phone to interact with society or read the menu at a restaurant or park your damn car.

I understand the nostalgia to an extent. The internet once felt like it provided an escape from the spatial limitations of the real world, and not it feels like we're trapped in cyberspace as it bleeds into and out of meatspace like we're all in the second act of Satoshi Kon's Paprika. But unlike the nostalgia for the independent web brought about by disenchantment with predatory social media, I think the nostalgia for "the internet as a place" is a touch misguided.

Even without mobile devices, my siblings and I weren't so different from the very kids I was talking about above. My mom nearly broke our Playstation in a fit of rage because my sister refused to pause Crash Bandicoot to talk to our grandfather on the phone. I would ignore other activities to plant myself in front of a screen, even insisting to my friends that we play video games above pretty much anything else we could do, given the choice. My parents were probably grateful for the time we spent watching TV or playing video games that gave them some time to themselves, just like a lot of parents today with tablets and phones.

There really is just something alluring about the internet, about video games, about screens with their flashing lights and mood-setting background music... computers, far from tools anymore, are television in caricature. If you've ever read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death - which I only sort-of recommend, I'll touch on that in a different post perhaps - you can see the parallels between his critiques of the television-ification of society in 1986 and the problems we have with social media in the year two-thousand-and-whatever. I understand the book even had a bit of a renaissance among the anti-Twitter crowd for that very reason.

I've brought up getting rid of the computers in that room before. Not because I think kids should be utterly bereft of interaction with digital devices, but because maybe we can a place where they can destimulate themselves from screens a bit. A little oasis from the bleed of cyberspace, just for a few hours. There's always resistance. Some of it I understand. Some of it I don't.

I don't have a strong conclusion here. There's maybe some seeds to an essay worth sharing broadly in this half-baked word vomit of a blog post, but the main purpose was a little catharsis. Thank you, if you chose to read this, and thank you twice if you don't take this as indicative of how I like to present myself.