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I hate clichés more than anything else, but my child is the best thing that has happened to me.
J. softened my approach to the world (even as the world crumbles around us); he revived my interest in the ways and means of the universe; and he allowed me, for the first time in my life, to live outside the busy monkey brain that resonates in my skull, at least every time he cradles his downy head against my chest.
He is four years old, but he likes Hexadecimals (whatever they are), tectonic plates and the early works of Marvin Hamlisch. In some ways, I want to become more like him. I am catching up on National Geographic and my Wikipedia to be able to have a conversation at his level. It helps me understand the origins of thunderstorms and the fractal wonders of the Fibonacci series.
When I'm not there, he tucks his stuffed animals in a circle, pulls out his whiteboard and says, "Animals, let's solve some math problems." But I'm his dad, and that means he inevitably wants to be like me
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And what does daddy do?
Professionally, I am a book author, but more honestly, I am an iPhone user who, from time to time, to pay the mortgage, will release a novel or two.
The phone took control and partly destroyed my life. I am at all levels of social media, crushing the invective and publishing my books. As a dystopian writer, I'm aware of the news 30 seconds, addicted to the desperation that surrounds me. As a watch collector, my sad hobby of middle age, I am constantly surfing on watchmaking sites (yes, that's a problem) and looking for new pieces to follow for my collection.
SMS? You bet. The usual texts to follow with my wife, my friends and my plumber, and the constant flow of working texts intended for the agents, editors and drivers of impatient deliverymen.
J. discovered that dad was living on the phone and he started to pbad my phone and my wife's. Since he was born after 2010, he uses it as naturally as I used an abacus when I was growing up. in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s.
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I'm not worried he finds the wrong content, at least not yet. His main interests are in prime and twilight videos. But he is realizing that the future of his world will be lived in the digital world as much as in the real world. Which is to say that my four year old son discovered texting.
"GOOD NEWS," he wrote to his beloved baby-sitter.
"The storm stopped nine hours ago and 20 minutes ago."
"Can you go to Wagamama with me?"
"I have 995 dollars and 30 cents."
"ABSOLUTELY," replies his babysitter. "IT'S A LOT OF MONEY, J."
"THANK YOU," he told him in return.
"4:30."
I'm glad my four-year-old cares enough for her babysitter to make sure she stays out of the rain.
I am also happy that he can invite her to a noodle dinner (4:30 am) and tell him that he has enough money in reserve for the receipt of the check. (Honestly, I do not know how he got so much money.) Has he invested on his side?
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But is it fair for a four-year-old? Do I refuse him the opportunity to be a child? Should I take off his phone? More specifically, am I a bad model?
Children were always in a hurry to grow up, but life had never been so fast and data-driven. When I was my son's age, my dad told me that there was a tree growing chopsticks. This idea has obsessed me for probably a good full year.
He and I have already met a tree that looked like a bicycle tire stuck between its branches and my father looked at me like to say, "See? All kinds of things grow on trees. It was then that I became a true believer.
Nowadays, my son was just typing in my phone "Are chopsticks growing on trees?" And three seconds later, he said to me, "Dad, it's not okay" in the same tone that he adopts with his stuffed animals when they have a problem. wrong in "math clbad".
I understand that human beings are evolving and that the barriers between man and technology will continue to collapse. But I do not want my son to go to the other side for the moment, as sophisticated as it sounds.
Instead of relieving fear and anxiety, the phone adds to that.
Maybe it's time to tell the truth to my son. Dad looks so hard at his phone, not because it makes him happy, but because every shot and tap of his screen provides a tiny puff of dopamine that makes him slide even further into an endless cycle designed to generate advertising revenue for some big companies in Northern California.
Instead of relieving fear and anxiety, the phone adds to that.
Maybe J. would understand all this. He knows when dad is scared. Faced with the London Eye 443 meters high (I am both a claustrophobic and an acrophobe), he told me: "Do not worry, dad; I hold your hand. "
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Parenting in these troubled times is not made for sensitive souls, and sometimes I forget that my son needs me more than me. It's time to let go of the anxiety and the need for dopamine and stop my phone.
The real world awaits us, as is the world of imagination, which is the best of all. I know a baguette in Central Park that is ripe for picking.
– Gary Shteyngart is the author of several novels; his last Lake Success. Bug him on Twitter @ Shteyngart.
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