On holiday, it’s time for parents to draw a line in the sand

The Netflix series Adolescence set records for the streaming company with 66 million views in its first week.

I’m not surprised. Everyone I know or meet has been talking about it, especially parents and grandparents.

Owen Cooper stars as 13-year-old Jamie Miller in Adolescence.

The four-part drama follows the arrest of a 13-year-old schoolboy, Jamie, for the murder of a female classmate and the impact it has on his family, his friends, the police officers who arrest him and a court-appointed psychologist.

It’s a searing examination of the online radicalisation of boys to inflict violence on women and girls.

Inspired by a series of knife attacks on young women in the UK, and the rise of misogynistic influencers such as Andrew Tate on incels (involuntarily celibate) young men, Adolescence’s premise couldn’t be more topical.

It has also surprised parents who felt it was safe to leave their children alone in their rooms for hours with their computers, or who already worry about the harm the free access to smartphones and iPads is having on their kids’ mental health.

Admiring the scenery.Credit: iStock

There’s a growing global, grassroots movement of parents determined to create a smartphone-free childhood for their children, not one determined by addictive algorithms that deliver harmful content and lead to cyberbullying, potential grooming and academic distraction.

Australia’s social media bans for children under 16 and bans on smartphones in schools by educators are in their early days, but it’s the use of devices outside schools that parents still grapple with. They seem benign machines that in some ways have made parenting easier.

When I travel, I see kids, of every age, on iPads and smartphones. Plug your child into downloaded content on an iPad and that nine-hour flight to Thailand is suddenly much more manageable (Not necessarily for other passengers when the kids don’t have headphones, though).

But where do parents draw the line? The kids are entertained by what’s on their iPads during boring stretches of travel, but what about when they arrive?

From my observation, kids don’t easily give them up. I’ll never forget being at a beautiful beach bar in Sri Lanka, where the tables were well scattered under palm trees and there was plenty of safe space for kids to run riot. Next to me, a table of eight children, from families travelling together, were all engrossed in their iPads. Not even the monkeys seemed to interest them.

I’m sure there are still plenty of ways for kids to develop their imaginations, but if free play is limited at home, which it can be, especially for urban kids over safety issues, it seems a shame that the opportunities travel presents for real-world discovery are downplayed or ignored.

I’m glad I didn’t have an iPad when growing up. Boredom is good for you. I may never have been a writer if I hadn’t spent all those childhood years sitting on my suburban fence imagining other places to be.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of nights spent in a tent while mum read the adventures of Winnie the Pooh by torchlight, my sister and I screaming with laughter.

I’m glad we had books where we could imagine worlds for ourselves, not through some cheesy animation with American accents.

Modern devices are tools of mass distraction, and few are immune (I keep pointlessly checking the screen of my phone while I’m trying to write this). Parents who have grown up with them are possibly more comfortable with an iPad than Scrabble, jigsaws or card games. They need to take time out for themselves too.

It’s hard to put the genie back into the bottle once the kids (and adults) have been lured by the entertaining, gossipy, dazzling, confusing Other Side.

I was recently at an outback lodge where there was a box in the room where guests could place their devices during the holiday. Digital detoxes were all the fad for a while, but I wonder whether anyone did them.

But if I were travelling with kids, once the flight was over, I’d use the opportunity to draw a line, especially for the younger kids. Use the event of travel to do a mandatory digital detox.

I know it’s much easier said than done. (I’m a grandparent of a four-year-old.) But, if your kids ferociously resist the idea, or are bored by monkeys, beach games or eating lunch without staring at a screen – then that’s an indication you really need to help them, and maybe yourself.