Modern life has brought us an almost unhealthy dependence on screens. Just as it makes it easier for us the communicationoffers better and more effective ways to access knowledge and allows certain conditions for work, it also makes us stay most of the time before one of those, whatever its form or technology.
Thirty years ago, when the idea of the Internet, it was hardly an aspiration and a dream to ensure that a person had devices in which they could carry out various actions, such as watching television or carrying out any transaction. Today that device is real and to a large extent we depend on its use.
When my son wakes up I am in front of a screen and when he goes to bed he often sees me holding another. I have become aware and try to break with that routine at one point in the day, postponing homework many times for the time he sleeps. I grab a book, play with his toys, we dance, we go out for a bike ride…
But, the screens remain on the table, or like a pet they curl up on top of the bookshelf, between books they remain lazy until they emit some kind of sound and we fall again.
One day, in a game that we invented, my son had to describe me and said: “the one who always works”. Sometimes, when he is six years old, he says phrases that we have used to request him: “the computer has hypnotized him”. And from his point of view, that may be the reason why I find myself sitting in front of my laptop most of the time.
Although one is reading, or watching a documentary, or following a teacher of this or that; Although he only tries to organize ideas in what used to be called “manuscript”, the screen, for him and for those his age, represents a common element in the life of an adult. By imitating us, they also want to have it in their hands, in front of his eyes.
At six years old the temptation is strong. Along with technology, children are bombarded by youtubers who show how to play. They seem to be protagonists in a network that includes the toy industry, publishing and, of course, advertising. There are children, probably the majority, who at least once try to behave like youtubers, and thanks to the screens they even make their own material.
That is why, although they do not always represent danger or the possibility of ending in an addiction, like any parent, and like any minimally concerned family, we spend our time looking for ways for our children to have a reasonable relationship with screens; elements, by the way, that also allow him to reason a little better, think faster, exercise reading and calculation, imagination, immerse himself in other worlds and illustrate his knowledge.
I’m happy if I manage to get him to barely go to the tablet, the phone or whatever on the weekends. For this reason, we invest the nights in reading paper books. I like that you hear the sound of the pages turning the page, that you feel the blow on your chest or head if the book slips, that you observe those illustrations with diverse aesthetics.
I also enjoy reading him poetry written for adults, and I am surprised to realize that he has grasped what a verse says that he was not supposed to understand. It is then that I return to poets and verses that I also heard in my childhood, as happens with Martí.
The moment is quite moving most of the time, because something from my own childhood comes back. Together with the school world and the image of books, people, friends, family and their habits arrive, that time with its virtues and defects.
I am not a romantic or sensitive, but not quite the opposite. Or so I would like to believe; It is the idea that I have always wanted to do.
And that is what I wanted to tell you, that fleeing to the screens, with my son next to me, my wife on the other, lying in bed reading a poem by Martí, many nights I face simple verses like these:
If the frown frowns, I fear;
If you complain to me,-
which of a woman, my face
Snow swaps:
His blood, then, animates
My skinny veins:
With his joy my blood
It swells, or it dries up!
And I swear I’m about to cry, and I have to stop reading, take a breath, make a joke and stop the blow of melancholy that floods my soul and I don’t know why. Only afterwards do we follow the ritual with which one seeks to maintain, as perfect as technology, our humanity.
