Colm O'Regan: I hope society bans phones until an industry designed to make my kids addicted is fixed

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.

Parenthood, it turns out, is just an exercise in growing empathy. 

These days, I am empathising more and more with the witch in Rapunzel. Yes, of course it’s wrong to imprison someone in order to harvest their hair for its rejuvenating powers. 

But the impulse to keep a child from finding out about the real world and away from smartphones and other modern ills is very understandable.

These days, I am mostly staring open-mouthed in horror at stories about children staying up all night on TikTok.

Aside from anything else, I just can’t understand when are they going to sleep. 

Every so often when I feel like maybe there isn’t enough face-swallowing cringe in my life, I’ll glance at my teenage diaries. 

Once I get past the toe-curling earnestness, the cheek-scraping “no one understands me”, the disappear-behind-the-couch “WHY WON’T GIRLS LIKE ME”, one thing stands out. 

How much I talked about being tired and the heroic Rip Van Winkle sleeps I had. 

I’d go to bed on a weekend night then just casually sleep for 13 hours. It wasn’t laziness. Just necessity. I needed all my energy for the angst and to grow my body asymmetrically.

So when the hell are they sleeping if they’re watching the videos algorithmically pumped into them to best stimulate their neuroses.

Like a lot of parents of young children, I like to delude myself that the world will be fixed by the time I need it. 

For example, my girls have about 15 years before the rent crisis needs sorting. But now I realise that is but the blink of an eye in Irish infrastructure timelines. 

Likewise, I assume the massive industry designed to make them addicted and unhappy will somehow be fixed.

There’s a bit of hope. There’s talk of banning phones from primary schools. Personally, I want them banned until the children are old enough to not be able to find a place to rent, and have to stay in the tower with me. 

This overreaction is based mainly on how I see parents blindsided by tech that just morphed and evolved month by month.

But I’m kidding myself. There’ll be something else that’ll blindside me. 

Deep fakes or robot dogs or drone bullying. So I have to take hope in the children’s own resilience. 

They seem pretty anti-smartphone now. They don’t want to turn out like Daddy. 

When they see me paused at the sink lost in thought they shout “Distracty App!” (the app that blocks social media). 

It’s basically an intervention every day. “NO,” I snarl, “I’m working” and then I realise I’m snarling.

The other approach is to gently let them know there’s an entire industry that just wants their attention. 

And to point out all the fun things they can’t do if they’re watching endless Youtubes. 

Like hanging upside down on monkey bars and giving me heart failure that they’ll break their neck. 

That’s the other thing you realise – the sheer percentage of your life you’ll be worried about the statistically-rare broken neck.

Thankfully at the moment they are minding snails out the back. 

They’re a little gentler now after I told them that pulling a snail up to move him is hard on the snails and their suction pads. 

I found that out on social media but told them I read it in a book.

One day they’ll ignore all that. Their teenage brains will know what the right thing to do is but instead they will listen to the young lad in the Micra with the Ferrari engine who wants them to sit outside Circle K listening to Jordan Peterson podcasts.

But in the meantime, life is still simple. The youngest bounds in, all serious. “Minding snails is a lot of responsibility, Daddy.”

I hear ya, kid.