Our digital darlings need a dose of reality

I BELIEVE it’s called meshing, although as a non-geek (that is, an advanced technophobe) I couldn’t be sure. It’s the process of an individual — your kid, for instance — sitting on a sofa with the telly on, volume up, but he’s not watching it because he has an iPad in one hand and a PSP console thing in the other.

He has earplugs rammed in, to block out the sound of the telly, even though he put it on in the first place. And the laptop, open on the floor, is tinnily, hissily playing a selection from Spotify. The commentary from Fifa 13 blares from the iPad, and there is more white noise coming from something else on the Playstation console.

If you were to MRI the kid’s brain at this stage the neurons would probably resemble either a set of Christmas lights on the verge of explosion, or worse, an area of total darkness, where all brain function has crashed from over-stimulation — and the kid is still just sitting there, automatically moving his hands across the screens the way chickens still run around after they’ve been decapitated.

“It’s summer outside,” you might call loudly, snapping up the blinds to let the light in. The kid winces like a vampire, his face contorting in the sudden sunshine. “What are you doing!” he bellows. Telly off, laptop closed, PSP and iPad wrestled from his grasp, earplugs yanked from his ears. A meltdown ensues, after he has been forcibly disentangled from his techno-drugs. It’s like standing in a gale, as he shouts that this is SO UNFAIR and you are RUINING HIS LIFE.

“But it’s summer,” you point out. “Summer hasn’t happened for years. It’s been so long you probably don’t remember it. It’s when the sun shines and people go outside and interact with each other.” The kid looks at you blankly. In the end you shoehorn him out the door, lobbing a football after him, as he stamps down the garden path shouting abuse over his shoulder. Then you run back in, gather up all the cables, wires, and devices, and shove them in a drawer. You disconnect the broadband, and unplug the telly.

The kid comes back a while later, flushed from the sun and running around. His friend comes over too. There is pizza, and a trampoline in the garden. But the two of them go and slump indoors, staring at the blank screen of the telly, their thumbs twitching like phantom limbs hovering over invisible consoles. You remain resolute, the technology hidden.

“What are we going to DO!” they demand. God. Just six more weeks of this. You begin to wonder if countries with child labour — where small kids go blind sewing footballs and cheap disposable clothes in badly-lit sweatshops — might be recruiting. You have the perfect candidates for a summer job.