Technology tough on today’s parents

Let’s face it— moms slogging it out in the 21st century are nothing short of superheroes. They drive faster than a speeding bullet to get to their kids’ activities, leap tall piles of laundry in a single bound and with more power than a speeding locomotive, they wrench mobile devices from the hands of their zombie offspring.

These days, babies are practically born with the latest iPhone in their chubby little hands. I would not survive today’s parenting landscape with its infiltration of technology. I dodged a speeding bullet.

Our grown sons were relatively easy to raise, but even at that, I crawled to the finish line. I had enough crime to fight without policing technology 24/7, thank you very much. If memory serves, we only allowed them smart phones when they were around 13, which today would be considered criminal neglect and might land you in the clink.

I hated them being on the world wide web and constantly reminded them to be careful what they put out there because if they did anything that reflected poorly on me,

I’d end up medicated and in therapy.

Worse than the iffy judgement calls that go along with having a smart phone is the fact that it renders kids terrible grammarians and spellers — as a high school writing teacher, this irks me to no end.

I remember a text I got at midnight from one of our boys when he was a teenager: “hey can i stay out til 1:00 there’s a party.” Wow, he sure knew how to hurt me. I responded: “Over my dead body am I stretching your curfew based on your lack of punctuation. I’ve never been more disappointed in you!”

Not to mention, addiction to technology is rife with selfesteem issues. I can’t imagine being an insecure teenager scrolling through social media only to be bombarded with so-called perfect lives wherein everyone is ‘blessed’ on this ‘journey.’

Please. Show me photos of a sink full of dirty dishes and a recent whopping weight gain and then we’ll talk. Honestly, I’m hardly an insecure teenager but at times I have to remind myself (with the help of vodka) when I see Instagram pictures of people travelling to exotic locales and of families singing Kumbaya around a bonfire that they’re probably dead inside like the rest of us. At least that’s what I wish for them.

How parents oversee the safety issues with technology is beyond me. Back in the day when Dick sent a pic, it was literally that — a picture my friend, Richard, drew with crayons that he put in a mailbox. These days, it takes on a whole new meaning. Back then, sending nudes meant loaning a friend a pair of nudecolored pantyhose. And ‘sliding into someone’s DMs’?

Last I heard, DM was an ingredient found in cough syrup. And then there’s Snapchat, wherein the conversation disappears once everyone’s read it. That sounds about as easy for a (neurotic) parent to monitor as herding cats while blindfolded and in a coma.

When our sons first got cell phones, I was constantly checking who followed them, who they followed and what they posted. I thought I was so smart, but they probably had a burner phone under their pillow for all I know. It’s impossible to police.

I think my neuroses paid off though because our sons have grown into fine young men, and they rarely post on social media. Mind you, it could be that I’ve scared them off the internet with my embarrassing quest to be a middle-aged influencer.

Now it’s they who look over my shoulder and try to parent me: “Mom, please stop telling people you have six new TikTok followers and please stop posting on Facebook that you love me to the moon and back. We’ve been over this.” I ignore them. What are they gonna do — wrench the phone out of my age-spotted hands using more power than a speeding locomotive? Pfft.

I can take them.

Colleen Landry is a high school writing teacher, author of humour book Miss Nackawic Meets Midlife and co-author of the Camelia Airheart children’s adventure series. She and her husband are empty nesters in Moncton, N.B. Their two grown sons have ditched them for wider horizons. She is filling the void with Netflix, dark chocolate and Cabernet Sauvignon.