We are back from a week’s vacation on Prince Edward Island. Canadian internet has improved in the three years since we last visited but it was still mostly a respite from screens and emails. For both parents and kids. As much as I enjoy the internet and much of my livelihood depends on it, I have to admit I’m relieved there was no social media when I was a kid. I am likely the last generation of parents to grow up with this divide where we didn’t have the internet all the time as a kid.
The dysfunctional side of the internet is difficult for adults to handle. It must be strange and crazy for kids. Maybe the next generation of parents will find it easier to parent amid this weird often unhealthy online world. It will just be normal. Sort of. You will have an innate understanding that Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok is not real life and you need to be disciplined when you use these tools or they become traps.
My kids will never know what it was like to live in a world without the internet. But I will also never know what it’s like to grow up in a time where it is ubiquitous. Getting away even for a week and reminding each other that there is a life to collect and curate outside the strictures of the internet was time well spent.