Kids, Get Down Here and Watch TV – NOW!

When I was a kid, the most exciting night of the school week was when my dad told me to come downstairs and watch The Wonder Years with him. I’ll never forget it. I still remember that it aired on Wednesdays and even if I had a big homework assignment due the next day, it didn’t matter. First came The Wonder Years. It was mandatory viewing for me and the old man. I LOVED Wednesdays.

Then a couple years later, when I was thirteen or so, The Simpsons started airing on Thursdays. This too was deemed required viewing, officially making Wednesday and Thursday the greatest nights of my week. Several towns away, while my dad and I laughed and bonded over Kevin Arnold trying to navigate middle school, my wife was bonding with her parents over Seinfeld, laughing over George Costanza’s latest antics. To this day, we both can recite episodes from those shows as if we just saw them yesterday. This is partly because the shows were so great it’s hard to forget them, but more so, I believe, because sharing those laughs with our parents made it impossible to.

Hoping to build some memories and get myself a little stress relief, I sometimes yell at the kids to get off the screens and come watch TV with me. Yes, yes, I know. The irony is not lost on me, but I don’t care. I know the words don’t make any sense as they are leaving my mouth, but after a long day of operating on screens myself, TV seems like the easiest way to wean the kids off their addiction. Like giving a joint to a meth addict.

I know a lot of people might have a problem with this. Hell, I have a problem with it. But we’ve tried going with mandatory reading time, or “family” time, and what that really means is trying to make the kids enjoy other experiences in this life besides screens, as we grit out smiles and pull them around with exaggerated enthusiasm. It’s a lot of work.

Have you tried interacting with a kid after they get off the screens? It’s not like they magically return to normal healthy people again. There is an hour of detox that takes place where they replace Siri (or Google) with you. Hey Dad, what’s the square root of 7? Hey Dad, what’s the most popular song of all time? Hey Dad, do you know this YouTuber who has a billion followers? You don’t? They are super famous; how could you not have heard of them? Hey Dad, play music by Machine Gun Kelly. Hey Dad, hey Dad, hey Dad… And then, just right before you’re about to have a seizure, Hey Dad, did you see the video of all the Jets fans shouting, “F Joe Biden?” Before you know it you’re googling “Jets Fans F Joe Biden” on your smartphone and you’re back to square one.

It’s not like we wanted these devices either. We weren’t the type to thrust devices in our kids’ hands so that we could get through a night out at a restaurant. In fact, I’m fairly device allergic, being the last person that I know of to even get a cellphone, back when those were a thing. If we could go back to the good old days and dropkick all of their devices into the trash, I’d be all for it, but that’s totally unrealistic. The schools require them to be on a laptop or an iPad all day long, so the kids themselves have no choice but to be hooked up to these brain-sucking digital octopi.

It’s not a great environment for kids these days. They are stressed to the max, and that was before we gave them PTSD about covid. Their brains are sponges and they are being overloaded with more stimuli than I can possibly imagine. When I was a kid I was required to watch The Wonder Years and The Simpsons, and then was pretty much left to my own devices (pun intended) unless I gave the schools something to draw my parents’ attention (which I did). Now we’re expecting kids to use a powerful video game system to do their schoolwork and then be able to interact like normal human beings after two hundred consecutive days of being “plugged in.”

So, what do we do? We turn off the TV to make sure they aren’t getting any more unnecessary screentime, but who are we really punishing when we do this? Ourselves! Why oh why do we this to ourselves? I’m tapped out too and need to get some downtime! What about me? I want to watch TV again! I miss TV! So I’m turning the TV back on. While it’s not ideal, it’s better than computer screens, and who knows, maybe it will give me and the kids something to laugh over. Just like the good old days.