By Heidi Hess
The yelling was coming from my son’s room. The enclosed space muffled the actual words, but it was loud enough to wake me up from my pre-bedtime nap in my recliner at 12:57 a.m. I made the unfortunate mistake of poking my head into his room to tell him he needed to go to bed only to be met with head shaking, finger pressed to his lips, begging me to be quiet to avoid social embarrassment and the teasing of his ‘friends’. Nope. “It’s a school night, Mr. Man. Time to go to bed.” Spoken in true mom form.
My sixteen-year-old teenage son is a good kid. Compared to most kids his age, he’s an angel. But if I’m being honest, I’m concerned about the amount of time he is spending online ‘gaming’. I’m showing my age here by saying this but, ’In my day (see? I’m old enough to start sentences like that) we met our friends outside. A motley group of teenage kids on bikes wreaking havoc in the cookie-cutter suburbia that was home. Things change.
Fast forward to the Sunday after my son’s late-night incident and I get my weekly screen time report from Apple. I have already beat myself up over the weekend for not meeting my writing goals and of course, I have a hard time understanding where my time has gone. I usually blame it on work and family life. Those things are the priority. And so, I am stunned at what I’m looking at in this report. Hours and hours were wasted on social media. Do I need to watch the lumberjack on TikTok? No. How many recipe videos that include crescent rolls do I need to watch? Zero. Knowing the scent profiles of perfumes is not going to help me write a best seller. Needless to say, this was a hard pill to swallow.
With all of this in mind, I march ever closer to the New Year. I’m at an age where, across the board, I need to make some serious changes. My screen time is wasted time. And while I know my son ‘hangs out’ with his friends online, I hope he sees my change and decides to cut back a bit. Can we, as parents, be a role model for our kids later in life? Absolutely. But they’re smarter now. They pay attention not to what we say but to what we do.
So, this year, good ol’ 2024, I ask you – Are you the best version of yourself? We could all use some honest self-reflection. Let’s hold each other accountable for hitting those goals. One of mine is to spend less time on social media and more time writing or doing things with the kids. I’m going to make it stick this time.
Right after I check in on that lumberjack on TikTok. Ha. I’m kidding… sort of…