Usually a cardinal starts off. Then the sparrows pipe up, a dove chimes in, and a pair of wrens have their say. They’re all atwitter, it seems, that daybreak repeats itself.
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Outside my bedroom window, the dark is lifting. I get up, bring my coffee back to the room, and stare at my phone for good reason. It’s listening with me, the Merlin app recording birdsong then identifying each artist by species according to its acoustic signature. Like Shazam for birds.
Carolina chickadee (of course.)
Great crested flycatcher (already?)
Cedar waxwing (my favorite!)
Eighteen more species will swoop in before 7am. There is peace and simplicity to what soon becomes a kind of orchestra warm-up, everyone doing their own thing, testing their instrument, no synchrony, all tuning into their own sounds. And the occasional squawk at the injustice of the pecking order at the bird feeder.
I am all ears and all-powerful with my magic phone-wand. When a subtle squeak like a dog toy lights up “brown-headed nuthatch” on the screen, one tap shows me its geographic range, habitat, migration patterns, and dozens of photos. It can’t escape being known. These little guys spend their days bopping up and down tree trunks, inconspicuous in their bug-eating ways. You wouldn’t know they were there but for their quick movements and, if you listen carefully, their quiet voices.
I’m torn between the joy of discovery and the letdown of being shown how to make it. Time was, I’d grab my binoculars and spend as many hours as it took to spy the source of that sound, then eagerly match the visual with a drawing, uncannily accurate, in The Sibley Guide to Birds.
Instead, today my coffee is still warm by the time I’ve positively identified twenty species.
I have a similar feeling when, midway into a kitchen conversation, one of my kids asks, “Hey Siri, what is the 21st Amendment to the Constitution?” It’s a reasonable question: the AP Gov exam is in two weeks and includes a detailed understanding of all twenty-seven amendments (I had to look that number up the old-fashioned way, using Google).
Why not reinforce classroom learning with augmented family discussion of the material?
Why not indeed: this question – how to teach wise technology use – has been my central parenting question since the pandemic, when education moved online and The Cloud moved in. Temporarily at first, or so I told myself: we needed internet news, comforting YouTube videos, work meetings on Zoom, FaceTime with family.
The Cloud made itself increasingly helpful. Dinner recipes! Text chats to coordinate carpools! Team sports apps, navigation maps, student driver tracking, oh my! Our new roommate became indispensable to solo parenthood and, by extension, our family life. To ground this new relationship IRL (In Real Life, it’s in the OED), I came up with a toothbrush analogy: use it when you need it, for the purpose it was intended, then put it away until you need it again.
That analogy is crumbling. One of my kids lost screen privileges recently and life almost fell apart. For both of us. Not just in the dramatic, everything-is-awful-because-my-brain-is-bathing-in-hormones-way (also for both of us). Information flow about school, afterschool activities, a pending new school, and a pending job came to a screeching halt while her alarm clock, weather forecast, and social connection disappeared. Poof! There went any semblance of household order or harmony. We both did our best to adapt. One of us did better at not complaining about it.
How do I survive without my phone? She moaned.
How do I survive without your phone? I wailed.
Five days into the tech hiatus (and forty-eight hours left, but who’s counting), I’m able to zoom out and refocus on the original question: why teach kids to use technology more sparingly?
For that matter, why should any of us be wary of The Cloud that permeates family life?
It’s addictive, distracting, and reality-distorting. Qualities shared by many of the things we’ve limited young people’s access to over the years: smoking and vaping, alcohol and drugs, movies, gaming, and TV content, porn. We don’t give our teens carte blanche on driving, sex or sex ed, or access to money for the simple reason that limits are in everyone’s best interest until they’ve developed the judgment to make good decisions on their own.
Last summer, I learned (while listening to a podcast on my phone) that there is science behind my growing unease. According to psychiatrist and Dopamine Nation author, Dr. Anna Lembke:
We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting. . . The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
Scary stuff. More so as I watch my own consumption creep up to stay on top of the kids’ schedules and ahead of their habits. It’s a balancing act, as much as any choice I make about how to spend my time. Including teaching: when to show and when to tell.
My coffee’s grown cold. A tiny bug is floating at the top. I wonder if my brown-headed nuthatch friend would like it, then chuckle at the idea of a caffeinated bird darting up and down tree trunks in search of its next hit.
I take a deep breath. It feels good to wonder. To smile at a ridiculous thought and again at the ridiculousness of having a joke all to myself. That I’m now sharing with the Cloud World.
Merlin flashes, trying to get my attention. I’ve been recording for ten minutes, would I like to keep going or stop?
Stop, please.
[Tap.]
I set my magic phone-wand aside, hunt down my binoculars, and head out to find more wonder.
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