Letter to my children: Limbic Hijacking

The bus squeals as it comes to a stop at the end of our road. I am clutching the mail for the day. Dragon, hops off the bus and proudly announced. “Momma, I made it to level six!”

Is he talking about the computer game? “That is so exciting, level six of what?”

“Mooom, of Gravity Run!”

You are SEVEN! Your brain is barely functioning. Why are you playing video games at school?!

“Of course! Congratulations!”

“My goal is to get to level 20.”

ARGHHHHH!! “That is a good idea, it is good to have goals.”

“Did you and Dad talk about when I could play it? Remember it is on ABC YA.”

“Yes, he and I are discussing what to do.”

Each time you mention playing this game you are proving to me that your brain is getting addicted.

I reach over and grab his backpack. “Did you play soccer at recess today?”

My beloveds, I often feel I am swimming upstream against a big current of cultural norms - around screen time, foods, leisure activity, fast fashion, consumerism, etc etc. I have years of data around these issues that inform how I make decisions. You two do not.

So here we are Dragon. You want to play a game that you are allowed to play at school as a reward. A game that has no redeeming value other than triggering your dopamine. How is this okay? I would honestly rather you were told to stand in a corner with a dunce hat on - at least then you would be using your imagination.

This is confronting to your mother for several reasons. I feel confronted because I don’t have a historical scaffold to edit/build upon/destroy. When I was seven we had one television with a turn dial to change the channels. We got a used Atari game console when I was about 12 or so. Tia got a GameBoy for her 16th birthday I think? In other words, I have no childhood memories of begging Baba and Meme to let me play video games.* I am swimming in uncharted waters - very much against the cultural tide of convenience and innovation for innovations sake.

We KNOW how terrible these technologies are for brains.** The dopamine response is real and insidious. There is even a phrase out there called “Anti-Dopamine Parenting”. We know that tech in schools is distracting and not good for our next generation of leaders (including you two)!

And yet, this is our society. We live here. We are all born to this time and this culture and this moment. As Eula Biss might say, we dug this hole ourselves.

So we need to figure out a way to dig ourselves out of this mess - forging a healthy path in these uncharted waters. Time to roll up our sleeves and see what can be done about this.

And meanwhile, it is a reward after your computer math games.

*There are plenty of memories of us sneaking television when we weren’t supposed to. Babe would catch us by feeling the warmth of the machine. Woof.

**Side rant that even the people selling us this technology know it is terrible for us. Capitalism at its best.