How many parents still pass the ‘screen test' in a gadget-driven world?

Time of India

5 days ago

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During that much-delayed flight from Delhi to Kolkata earlier this month, a Bengali family travelling from Washington DC to spend a part of their son's summer holidays with his grandparents caught my eye. For the entire six-hour ordeal caused by a 'technical issue' that first kept us in the aircraft for two hours, then the bus for half an hour and then the terminal for another two hours, the child did not whine, get fidgety or, importantly, be pacified with a screen.A few decades ago, that would not have seemed comment-worthy. After all, we also returned from New York when I was about the same age as that little boy for sweaty summer holidays in Kolkata entailing multiple long flights and train journeys. Only, being fidgety never yielded dividends from my parents and there were no 'screen' gadgets to engross my mind either. But getting hours of exclusive time with Baba and Ma always meant engaging interactions.That is precisely what that little Bengali NRI family did too, over 50 years after my own similar trips. Both parents took turns to hold the wide-eyed little fellow's attention and interest, with nary a recourse to either food or gadgets. There were stories and conversations about all sorts of things that a five- or six-year-old would find absorbing, including the "to-do" list for this visit to his parents' former hometown and the fun they had together in earlier trips and holidays.I was impressed enough to compliment the boy's parents on his exemplary behaviour. The parents laughed and said their son has been used to long trips ever since he was a baby as they love going on car journeys, both in India and the US. But there is more to it. These parents were also actually interested in engaging with their growing son rather than fobbing him off to the ministrations of technology, now considered an acceptable child management hack.How many parents today in our milieu relish the prospect of spending many hours with their children without falling back on screens? How many can or would like to tell stories, recount old family anecdotes or, indeed, be a child's first interactive encyclopaedia? Many, if not most, parents would much rather let a gadget do all that storytelling and information dispensing even if some do read to children at bedtime in the time-honoured tradition of western movies and serials.This week there was an alarming news story that a survey found American teenagers consider AI to be their best friends now, offering "non-judgemental" advice on everything from make-up and clothes to relationships and life choices. So, not only have parents been replaced by gadgets but besties too? Worse still, many of them averred that AI simply did their thinking for them. It is a terrifying and sad commentary on the growing isolation in 'advanced' countries.Just because millions of Indians can now afford the same gadgets, we are also heading that way, letting machines become our children's prime information sources, anchors and sounding boards. How are values and broader cultural and social traditions being passed on? Obviously, they are not. Worst still, what do most parents do with all the time freed up by technology taking over their duties as nurturers of their progeny? Spend it on their own gadgets, of course.My father bought a magnificent red-leather bound children's encyclopaedia for me when I was seven, which was a boon for those after-school hours in our New York penthouse after playtime in the park as TV watching was strictly regulated. But my parents remained the most inexhaustible founts of information and those long journeys to and from India were a bonanza of anecdotes and conversations. And seeing that NRI family reassured me that all is perhaps not lost!