Should we leave now?

Checks phone.

One hour 41 minutes.

Lots of red on the GPS map showing the route back home.

At least two crashes.

Nah, let’s hold off.

Checks phone.

Should we leave now?

One hour 47 minutes.

It’s getting worse. Plus it’s going to start raining.

Checks phone.

BOM radar shows rain with lots of orange and red bits.

Checks phone.

Friends on Facebook are sharing hellish traffic reports.

You’d be mad to leave now.

Driving holidays have changed haven’t they?

You can time your arrival to the minute. You can know every delay before you’ve even hit it. The smugness of achieving a smooth departure from home to holiday is worth a humble brag on whichever is your chosen social media megaphone. So different to pre-internet trips.

When I was a kid, my family drove from Darwin to Townsville in the summer of 1982 in a green Transit van with vinyl seats and no air-conditioning. Every couple of hundred kilometres, my parents would give my brother and me an ice cube to suck on to pass the time. Luxury.

If you’re stuck in traffic with kids these days, chances are technology will play a role in entertaining them and driving you. I’m grateful. I’m addicted. I’m anxious.

I love the world wide web, but I’m wary of it.

I’ve thought a lot about the virtual world the last couple of days I’ve been at the beach. School holidays and sand are an excellent combination but the conversation I keep having with other families with young kids is how to keep the real world top of the holiday agenda.

Our children are still in primary school and they’re right on the precipice of diving into the thrilling and potentially messy world of messages, memes and endless entertainment. How brilliant to have access to the totality of the world’s facts and fiction in your hand. How daunting.

I’m struggling with how to drip feed that into my tween’s life. For his first decade, I’ve been in control of where he goes, what he watches, when, who, how… and here I find the world knocking on his door. Right now, I don’t want to let it in.

I know it’ll find a way. I just want to filter the stimulation tsunami that’s about to hit. Is that even possible? I feel naive writing this, but I guess I want to appeal to other families who might be feeling the pressure to get sucked into the world wide whirlpool.

“Everyone else has a phone! Can I check my messages? Can I have Snap Chat, Tik Tok – what about Instagram?”

No, not yet.

Then ironically I scroll, scroll, scroll. I don’t play the pokies, but I know what it’s like to get that dopamine hit from shiny spinning lights. I love watching endless reels. I can’t stop but I don’t want my kids to start.

What a hypocrite. Make me a meme. I’ll probably *like* it.

Call me a World Wide Wowser. I don’t care. I want my kids to be able to pay attention. To what they want, when they want.

The Social Dilemma – the Netflix documentary is next on my list of things to watch with my 11 year old son. Stolen Focus – Johann Hari’s brilliant book will be added to my son’s bedside table. I want him to at least know what’s going on behind the screen that’ll inevitably become a big part of his world. Hopefully his generation will be more judicious in consumption. The signs are there.

Two twenty-somethings shocked me recently.

A 22 year old who’s sick of doom scrolling. He sets time limits and posts less to feel better.
A 28 year old who’s bought a “dumb” phone that flips open and flattened the time he spends online.

Maybe change is coming? A departure from screen time.

Should we leave now?

Checks phone…