One of my closest friends owns a white-table-cloth, fine-dining restaurant and I stopped
in to see him one recent Saturday evening. As we sat at the bar and chatted, the dining
room was humming with activity, every table filled with families, friends, couples on
dates, you name it, a full compliment of folks enjoying a nice night out and great food.

As my friend and I were talking, I glanced over his shoulder and took notice of the table
directly in front of me. Nearly in the center of the large main room, this long table of
twelve was fully engaged in multiple conversations, very animated, some gesturing,
laughing and carrying on, as what looked like three-generations of family members were
enjoying each others company.

But something was wrong.

At the end of the table closest to us sat a young boy on the left side, maybe eight years
old, and across from him, a little girl, a bit younger, both at the end of this table. They
both wore large and colorful head-sets, completely engulfing their ears, as the sat gazing
into their individual tablet-like computer screens, both of them grasping the devices
firmly with both hands, screens perched on the table in front of each child.

As the minutes ticked by, it was clear that these two young kids were completely in their
own little electronic worlds, totally mesmerized and hypnotically fixated to those colorful,
flickering screens. They could hear nothing of the surrounding family activity, their ears
filled instead with whatever sounds were coming out of the computer, completely
detaching them from their surroundings and any meaningful interactions with their
families or each other.

When I commented to my friend about my observations, he told me that in a previous
visit, that same group allowed those poor kids to conduct themselves in the very same
way, lost in their screens and devoid of contact, interaction and family bonding.
What a tremendous social and personal tragedy, depriving these young people of the
fleeting, singular opportunities to socialize with their peers and their elders.

What a lost treasure to be excluded from the collective wisdom, personalities and social situations
that ultimately mold and form them into who they will become and how they will see the
world and learn to behave. All of the words spoken, gone forever unless we hear them.

Those foolish and clueless parents are off-loading their responsibility as decent caregivers
to some commercial foolishness that fills their kid’s minds with whatever comes
gushing towards them. These computer programs are designed to enrapture kids, not
towards that which the parents should be giving them and teaching them, but whatever
that computer program has in store, mainly ways to make them consumers of whatever it
is they are selling.

These parents-in-name only seem to value their own socializing time over that of their
responsibility to raise well adjusted, socially capable youngsters that can actively
participate and contribute to a family dynamic. Doing so only exists in the real world of
the hear-now-and-present, not some animated, brain-numbing drivel that pushes kids into
isolation.

And in a few years, these same moronic parents will perhaps depend on the school and
social welfare systems counselors, therapists, psychologists and social workers to do their
best to take corrective actions to address the social-anxiety, attention-deficit, anti-social
issues that could have all been avoided had mom and dad taken their roles as parents a
little more seriously.

Anything seen on a screen can be seen at any time, there is no immediacy. Those
precious interactions when family and friends are all together, sharing a meal, or a
birthday, or a religious service, these are moments that cannot be recreated, they happen
once, right now, and you take from those times only your recollection, your interactions
and your memories, which will sustain you most after those moments and situations
subside, are long gone, and now reside only in the quiet of your own existence, many
years into your future.

Technology has many great uses. Way down on that list should be using it to substituteparent
your children and acting as a cheap baby-sitter. Give your children, your family,
all those in your orbit all you can give them of yourself because the time, it is fleeting and
the experiences and memories, in the end, are all we will finally treasure. It is your job,
as a parent, to make sure that what memories you child takes to their old-age, are the ones
that will sustain them in quieting and pleasing their souls long after we’re gone.

Please, take the job seriously.