iPad Kid Horror Stories From Parents And Caregivers

Buzz Feed

12-05-2025

I recently asked parents and childcare workers in the BuzzFeed Community to share their experiences and horror stories dealing with the dreaded "iPad kids." The results will make you wish we were back to using telephones and box televisions:
"The school I teach at has introduced iPads for all students (ages 11-18), and whilst the older kids are pretty good and use them for studying, the younger years cannot function without them. I'll walk through the school on my break and literally see groups of students sitting next to each other playing Minecraft and not talking to each other. They also can't handwrite legibly and will scream/swear at or physically attack adults who try to take away the iPad. Very sad. "
"My ex-boyfriend was (and is) a MAJOR iPad kid. I remember one day we were in class and I wanted to talk to him. I paused what he was watching, and he hissed at me. YES, HISSED LIKE A CAT. I ran to my other friend. She had this horrified look on her face. She asked me what the heck just happened, and I shrugged. Dodged a bullet there."
"I work in a restaurant, and many of the people we serve are rich. I have a lot of tables where the kids are iPad kids, but one time, I was standing at a different table, and I heard the parents talking to their kids, and them whining about their cell phones. The mom kept saying 'not now' and then the kid just started screaming at the top of his lungs (he was 4 or 5) until she gave him her phone. That happens a lot, and it's so cringey and irritating."
"Every time I go to a restaurant, there is always at least one table with a group of four people. Two parents, and two kids on iPads, the entire time watching god knows what. There isn't any conversation or interaction at the table. My generation sorta sucks."
"I babysit an iPad kid. They only hired me to find activities to distract them from their iPads so they don't have to deal with fallout. Anyway, they need parental controls because that 8-year-old has been exposed to too much. For example, one time he asked me if my sister and her boyfriend ever got naked and kissed. He's said a handful of sexualized comments that make me worried about the stuff he's watching."
"Grandad brings in an iPad in a Defender Otterbox with the screen shattered. Little Timmy (he's 4 years old) got mad because someone killed him on Fortnite, so he smashed the iPad. Okay, we can repair the screen. Take it out of the Otterbox to get the model number off the back...and it goes from an iPad to an iBoomerang. Yes. The little rabid tyke literally BENT THE IPAD in his rage, and the Otterbox was the only thing keeping it straight.
"My brother once got so mad at playing Roblox, he started screaming and crying, then he struck the iPad with his knee, snapping it in half with glass shards flying like grenade shrapnel, breaking the iPad I use for school."
"I work in childcare over the summers and had a camper who I knew was a bit of an iPad kid. He was always drawing the guys from the Minecraft YouTube videos he would watch. Well, camp ended for the summer, and I came back the next year, delighted to see this camper had returned, but was perplexed to see that he'd returned having developed a British accent. I asked him about it, and he said he'd started speaking with the accent because of how much Minecraft YouTube he watched."
"My son was an iPad kid. I say 'was' because he stopped using it (not by choice) at age 14. This was because I found an email printed out when I was cleaning his bedroom from a girl named 'Kiloni.' I was shocked because I had never heard of this girl before, and I had never seen anything on his iPad that showed him communicating outside of friends' texts. The email was obviously from a gold digger as she stated how much she wanted to 'do things' with him, but they couldn't be together unless he paid for her flight from London. It stated the various 'ideas' she had been thinking about, such as how he would never want to leave her and how she would leave him satisfied. I searched and found many more emails, each more suggestive than the last.
"About a month ago, my wife and I were trying to talk to our daughter. She was looking down at her iPad (I'm not surprised). When I looked down to see what she was watching, she was watching 'Last to Pee Wins'!?!?? I don't know what she's doing, but it concerns me."
"Most iPad kids play mobile games and watch PBS all day, right? Well, not my niece. She's 6, and has had an iPad since age 4 (good job, parents) and somehow has managed to find succinct, toddler-digestible versions of Marxist literature. I work in service, and the last time I talked about my job around her, she told me that I'm 'a slave for the upper class.' I have no idea if she even knows what she means, but it's hilarious either way. On several occasions, she has also brought shockingly nuanced takes on class-related issues, for a 6-year-old. I'm not joking. Keep in mind, this girl doesn't know her multiplication tables."
"I've watched kids walking around in stores with their iPads (on full volume, no less) glued to their faces. They aren't watching where they're going and will crash into stuff and lose their parents because they fall behind. They'll scream if the parent tries to take it away."
"I'm a kindergarten teacher, so I have no shortage of stories of kids who fight tooth and nail every time we need to put away the iPads and switch to a different activity in class. my husband and I visited Disney World last summer with our best friend. We kept running into this same family, and every time we saw them, their early-elementary-age kid was glued to his iPad. As we were boarding a ride and getting ready to move, he still had his tablet in his hand, blasting noise from a game with bright light coming off of it. I very politely asked them to put it away, and mom snatched it from him, turned it over in her lap, and snapped back at me, 'YOU'RE WELCOME!'
"My spoiled cousin was at my graduation party with an iPad. My aunt tried to take it from her because my grandmother was starting a speech. She took the iPad, and my cousin, who was 5, started screaming and crying. Then picked up a plate of pasta and threw it on the ground. Then she ran to me to beg me to ask her mom to give it back to her, because I'd been babysitting her since she was an infant. When I said no, she smacked my glass of RED wine onto me in my $120 white dress that I had to return the next day."
My younger sibling (seventh grade) tells me horror stories of iPad kids, and I am SHOCKED. The worst one is in science class, where kids have their computers out constantly. I don't just mean they won't put them away, I mean they're on them the entire period, have full on screaming battles with the teacher and each other about it, and get sent to the office about once a day because they're so addicted to their computers they'll do anything to stay on them. These kids are also exposed to so much stuff at such a young age that they don't know how to talk without using brainrot words, or cursing, or just saying plain inappropriate things, and they don't know how to hold a real conversation. I asked one of my siblings' friends a question about a sticker on his water bottle that I found interesting, and he said, 'Yeah, it's a sticker,' and went right back to playing whatever he was playing, STILL WITH HIS HEADPHONES IN. I am so ready for this era to be over."
If things feel a little grim after reading these, here's a dash of hope from a BuzzFeed Community member:
"I don't want to sound smug about it — I'm just trying to reassure you that there are still kids out there who aren't addicted to their screens. My kids sat through almost three hours of a band festival with only a book and a piece of paper on the most cramped bleachers. Play the long game — kids won't need devices if they have toys, parental attention, and time to imagine. My kids are far from perfect, but I think they'll be good members of society. And the same is true for many of their friends. There's still hope!"
Do you have an "iPad kid" horror story? Tell us in the comments below!