SAN JOSE, CA—With the official first day of summer less than one week away, parents across the nation are anxiously awaiting what the internet has prepared for their children.
For at least the last 10 years, parents have depended on the digital content of the internet to provide stimuli to their offspring, especially during the summer months when most children no longer attend school. The youngsters, hungry for some input, often turn to their nurturing virtual friends, fantastical video games, and other moving objects to keep them from dying of boredom for the approximate 90 days that they are not in a physical classroom.
Parents appreciate what the internet has had to offer so far. Area mom, Chelsea Arbuckle, 42, said, "Oh, it's just so good for my little Brock [10]. Anytime I don't feel like interacting with him or he asks a difficult question about existence or politics or whatever, I can just tell him to get on his tablet. That shuts him up for a good long while, and then I can sip some wine and peruse Pinterest so that I don't have to think about how trapped I feel in my marriage."
Indeed, the internet has saved multiple parents from providing experiences or discipline for their children. Martin Reardon, 47, explained that, "Whenever my kid does something out of line, I can threaten to take away her phone. That works out great, because I feel like I'm really doing something, and she doesn't even argue with me because she still has a laptop, a tablet, and a couple of burner phones she uses to text her boyfriends."
Although the internet was not originally designed for the tasks normally reserved for adult-child mentorship, it has really taken this role to heart, producing millions of nonsensical videos for children, pseudo-scientific explanations for how the world works, friendships based on nothing, and ways to rate each others' worth. As these trends continue, summer will likely continue to be children's favorite season, and may soon be the same for their parents.
Comments