Randall Park

They couldn't even hear what we were saying.

They turned our voices into bird chirps.

Please, we asked them again, aware of the helplessness in our voices.

We need you to turn off your connections.

And finally, they blinked their eyes and told us they had.

But when they giggled during dinner, how could we be sure they'd closed anything down?

Then all of a sudden, our children fell silent.

We watched as they crouched in the middle of the carpeting for hours, entertained by nothing, it seemed.

They sat alone in their rooms, their hands building invisible castles.

When we asked them once, twice, three times what they were doing, they told us with frustration, please be quiet.

We are trying to concentrate.

Our houses became silent again and our children stopped asking for things.

only for our credit cards, which they needed to purchase upgrades.

No, we said.

Please, they asked.

No, we repeated.

We weren't about to put our credit card numbers into the ether.

But they cried, and they yelled at us, and when they wouldn't relent, we finally read the numbers off our cards and gave them expiration dates.

We tried to tell our children about the benefits of having at least some offline time, an hour or two, even a couple minutes, just to take a walk, to ride a bicycle, to play in the snow or watch springtime lightning storms.

We printed up contracts with consequences for spending too long online, had our children sign on dotted lines, forced them to make promises which were never fulfilled.