A mother laments her decision to use the iPad to raise her child:
My son is the stereotype of an iPad kid.
Motherhood was never for me. I never, ever wanted a child. But I let my mother pressure me into having one, because she wanted to be a grandma soooo bad and she badgered me about it for years and years and YEARS, to the point of tears and begging. And eventually I let her warp my brain into being reluctantly convinced I wanted one too.
I hated being a mother before my child was even born. I knew I was making the biggest mistake of my life and I could not believe how stupid and weak-willed I was to cave to pressure. My partner wasn’t even the one insisting on it, he was totally ambivalent. I could have told him I didn’t want a child and he would have still stayed with me and loved me. I don’t know why I did this to myself and our relationship. He is more emotionally engaged with our son than I am and I’m glad for that, at least, but he works long night shifts so he isn’t really super involved. As for our son…
He is now 6. I have put a screen in front of his face for most of his life. It’s the only thing that would get him to settle. He is the embodiment of the stereotype of the “iPad kid” you see online. He could expertly navigate a smartphone before age 3. He needs his iPad at basically every waking moment of the day and if you take it away from him he just screams and screams, sometimes until he starts vomiting. He’ll do this anywhere, public or private it doesn’t matter. His will is so unbelievably stubborn, he doesn’t give up EVER and I eventually cave every time because I don’t have the energy or commitment to deal with him.
He has a low attention span, is always in a foul mood. And one of his classmates showed him pornography last year so now I have had to install safeguarding apps. He sometimes randomly starts moaning sexually specifically to upset us because he knows it’s not appropriate. He always has the iPad within reach, he needs to have it on and playing Youtube even in restaurants. Enjoying a day out at the park to touch grass or even sitting through a two-hour film in a movie theater is out of the question because he would get bored and scream for the iPad again. He doesn’t play with toys, they don’t interest him. Sometimes I think the iPad has prevented him from forming an imagination of his own. He doesn’t draw, play pretend, etc. Just iPad and Youtube. It is the only thing he enjoys and wants to interact with. Don’t even get me started on the issues he has in school.
And I feel horrified by all of this because I know this is not normal for a child, but I’m so exhausted. I know I’m the one that did this to him, that he’s just a child and I’m the one who decided that I couldn’t get through parenting him every hour of the day. I just pray he turns out even somewhat normal, that maybe as his brain develops further his behavior will level out. I don’t have a lot of hope because I don’t have the will power to take the iPad away. Motherhood is too hard without it. I feel like the most selfish mother in the world.
A sad tale. I don’t think the addictive nature of modern internet media such as youtube and tiktok are good for a developing child. It’s quite unlikely this woman’s child would turn out “even somewhat normal” once he grows up. Time will tell, though, on how the newest generation of children will turn out. Given how the earliest iPad kids came about after the 2010s, this would mean the oldest of them are just about to enter high school now. We should be able to see fairly soon what sort of adults they will end up.
Original screen cap:
Temple of Zagan 