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I have about eight concurrent Crossplay games going on. Yes, I am playing games with strangers on the internet.<\/p>\nI don’t know if you can relate, but the main arguments in our house (at the moment) are about screen time. I worry about my kids being plugged in too much.<\/p>\n
Two have phones, the other fella is still in the fun IRL stage and is currently working on fashioning a scooter that can go on the trampoline without tearing it, because really, two trips to the emergency department in the last couple of weeks just isn\u2019t enough, he\u2019s going for the hat trick.<\/p>\n
Every time the bigger boys sit down to the table I automatically incant \u201cget off your phone\u201d without even looking at them. Most of the time, they\u2019re not even on the phone and throw their hands up in the air and give out to me in between shoving seven boiled potatoes simultaneously into their gobs. When we get in the car, I whinge \u201cput your phone away, taaalllk to meeeee\u201d, and they\u2019ll go \u201chow is your day, mom?\u201d, and cleverly get me talking about myself while their eyes glaze over and flick back to the phone hidden down by their outer thigh.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo phones in bedrooms,\u201d I yell, as I plug mine in next to my pillow. We have routines and timers on the 14-year-old\u2019s device so he can\u2019t be more than 30 minutes on TikTok. I lecture him about addiction while I make sure I don\u2019t lose my \u2018Queens streak\u2019 on LinkedIn. (It tells me I am smarter than 95% of CEOs. I feel validated and awfully clever.) Last Monday, I got a little pop-up on my phone notification: \u2018Check your weekly screentime report.\u2019 Hmm. I click on it.<\/p>\n
I spent an average SEVEN HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES a day on my phone last week. How could that be?<\/p>\n
Under screen time balance, there\u2019s a message. \u201cOn average, each day while you were awake, you spent four hours 28 minutes more not using your phone than using it.\u201d Is that supposed to make me feel better, Samsung, you pusherman? That is outrageous. So what do I spend most of my time on? Not streaming services. Not the Borrowbox library app that I turn to at 3am, mind swirling. Not my emails. Not my banking app. Not Spotify. Not even the Photos app that I use to look back on pics of when the kids were small, and the only screens I worried about were the ones on the window so the sun wouldn\u2019t bother them in their car seats.<\/p>\n
Maybe The New York Times games app? I have about eight concurrent Crossplay games going on. Yes, I am playing games with strangers on the internet. If I found out the kids were doing it, I\u2019d fling their device into the bin, then set it on fire, screaming about paedophile scammers wanting to sell their livers on the black market. To be fair, my liver would be worth close to nothing, but still, I am not playing by my own rules.<\/p>\n
I have about eight concurrent Crossplay games going on. Yes, I am playing games with strangers on the internet.<\/p>\n
\n WhatsApp.\n <\/p>\n
I am aghast to learn I spent nine hours 59 minutes on it last week. 61 notifications a day; 430 notifications in total last week; 90 app opens every day; 632 app opens total last week.<\/p>\n
This is bad. This is really bad. If my kids find out, I am done for.<\/p>\n
Plus, I\u2019m old, I don\u2019t have that many good years left, do I really want to spend it gawping at this tiny screen?<\/p>\n
I ask my husband for his phone. His WhatsApp has 113 unread messages. I get palpitations looking at this and have to breathe into a brown paper bag. What if it\u2019s a sports group changing venue? What if it\u2019s a playdate invite? What if Rachel has lost her jumper AGAIN? He shrugs. I go into my Groups tab in WhatsApp. There are literally too many to count, I\u2019m scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. There are hundreds of them. I bet you have hundreds too, but you don\u2019t realise it. There\u2019s the usual well-used family and friends stuff. Also though, there\u2019s Book Club, I\u2019ve never once been to a gathering but it\u2019s kind of morphed into a catch-all for recommendations for sun creams, dog rehoming, and a run-don\u2019t-walk alert for a specially selected Moldovan Rara Neagra wine in Aldi for \u20ac9.99. There\u2019s a group called The Mad Ones (ye know who ye are), Pickleball, The UnGodlyParents, Cocktail Queeeeeeeeeens (chance would be a fine thing), The We Heart Richard Club (don\u2019t ask), Darren 40, Bandon Rev, The Best of the Best, Cairde an Choiste, Friday Dip, Crawford Brunch Crew, (I\u2019m haunted with fuzzy memories from that… Esther has vomited on, then left, the group), Old Farts Night Out In Clon (never happened), Wexford Wanders, Cork Finest Lightweights, Buffy Babes \u2026 they go back to May 2017. I\u2019m not even going to go to the Updates and Communities tabs.<\/p>\n
How could I spend that much time on WhatsApp? Am I high? Maybe I have a split personality? What in the inception is going on around here?<\/p>\n
Maybe I should worry more about myself on the phone and not the kids. I think I\u2019ll just get \u2018hypocrite\u2019 tattooed across my forehead and be done with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don’t know if you can relate, but the main arguments in our house (at the moment) are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-473955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}