🔗 Is gen alpha screwed?
Andre Franca
3 min read“Companies are literally designing everything for addiction these days. Trying to get you hooked on whatever they can profit off of as early in your development as possible… Limiting screen time, curating the entertainment so it’s not just an algorithm determining what our kids watch, hell just BEING present with your kid is like 99% of the battle.” by Absurd Pirate
My Thoughts
Reading this as a father of a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old brings up a lot of reflections. The original post hits on something most people - and parents - often ignore: the difference between being “tech-native” and actually being tech-literate. We see kids who can navigate a locked iPhone at age two, but as the author points out, they’re lost when it comes to how things actually work.
The author also mentions the “mental death” of parenting under modern life, and I totally get that. There are days when I’m so drained that a screen feels like a life raft, so the comparison of high-stimulant shows to “baby heroin” makes total sense to me. That crap is bad enough for an adult; for a child, it can be devastating. I’ve watched my oldest son’s behavior shift in real-time depending on what he’s consuming. When it’s junk, he turns into different person - more reactive, less patient. It makes me realize that parenting today is largely about shielding them from a culture that wants to outsource their development to an algorithm.
With a 1 and 3-year-old, we try to make our home a fortress against that digital noise. It all starts with us controlling our own screen time, since our behavior reflects directly on our children - they are like sponges for both the good and the bad.
One of the best things we did last year was sign up for Leiturinha, a kids’ book subscription club. My kids absolutely love it. Instead of being hypnotized by a blue light, they get excited about the physical arrival of a new story. They love the smell of the pages, the textures, and the colors that don’t flash at them every second. One of the things I loved most about the United States was the public libraries - something that is unfortunately nonexistent in my current country.
We push reading and avoid screens as much as humanly possible. I’ve noticed that when we swap a tablet for a book, the interaction is completely different.
The author mentioned that “being present is 99% of the battle”, and reading to them is how I win some of those battles. It’s exhausting to “put the big boy pants on” every day after work, but seeing them discover the world through books rather than a YouTube video makes it worth it.