Ringing the changes on childhood

The Biblical saying has it, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child,… I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Now, however, in a reversal of that injunction, many parents in the US, and in other parts of the world, are trying to make their children revert to “childish things”. The reason is that children are increasingly becoming prey to ‘screen addiction’, spending more time on their smartphones than on any form of interaction, such as playing with toys, or with peers of their own age group.

Screen addiction — which sociologists say is becoming more and more common, in younger and younger children — has given birth in the US to a new economic activity, that of screen counselling. Screen counsellors are therapists who visit homes and community centres, to give practical advice to parents, and other authority figures, on how to make children less ‘phoney’ by weaning them away from their single-minded pursuit of app-iness. Screen councillors charge anything up to $250 per hour — no kid stuff — for their services, which include teaching parents how to teach their children to play games like hide-and-seek, and catch-catch. As a first step, some parents take a pledge not to give their childre n access to screen time till the age of 12, in the conviction that all phone and no play makes Jack, or Jill, a dull Huawei.