Handing an eight-year-old a smartphone with unrestricted internet access is not a neutral act.
It is not “keeping up with the times.”
It is not harmless convenience.
It is the moral equivalent of opening your wine and whisky cabinet, rolling a hashish joint, placing it neatly on the table, and telling the child: Help yourself. Have fun.
We recoil at that image because it violates something primal in us: our duty to protect a developing mind from substances it cannot possibly regulate. And yet we do exactly this, every day, with something far more potent than alcohol or drugs.
We hand children devices engineered to hijack attention, flatten impulse control, and manufacture dependence — and then act surprised when they cannot look away.
This is not metaphor. This is chemistry at its worst.
The Myth of the “Virtuous” Generation
It is often pointed out that Gen Z drinks less alcohol than previous generations. This fact is presented as evidence of moral progress, improved awareness, better choices.
That interpretation is dangerously naïve.
They are not less addicted. They are addicted differently.
Alcohol produces a dull, predictable high. Social media produces a rapid, variable, infinite one: dopamine on demand, novelty without effort, validation without achievement, and stimulation without substance.
Why would a generation reach for whisky when it has access to something far more powerful, far more portable, far more socially rewarding, and — crucially — approved by adults? No hangovers. No smell. No stigma. Just “screen time.”
Attention as a Commodity
Let us be clear about what is happening. This has been said before, and it bears repeating because it is still being ignored.
Your child is not the user. Your child is the product.
Every second of your child’s attention is auctioned. Every pause, scroll, replay, and linger is measured, logged, and monetized. Entire teams of behavioral psychologists, data scientists, and interface designers work tirelessly to ensure one thing:
That your child never learns to look away, never develops the ability to stop.
This is not accidental. It is not a side effect. It is the business model.
And the cost is staggering.
We are watching precious futures — intellectual futures — quietly hollowed out. The slow erosion of patience. The inability to contemplate on and comprehend complexity. The collapse of deep reading. The intolerance for silence. The fear of boredom.
These are not minor losses. These are the very faculties that produce thinkers, scientists, jurists, philosophers, and leaders.
Humanity is not just losing productivity. It is losing direction.
A Ruthless Filter (And Why That Matters)
Here is the uncomfortable truth — ruthless, even cruel, as it may sound:
This era is a filter.
In a world of continuous and unending feeds, constant stimulation, and engineered addiction, the real divide will not be economic or technological. It will be neurological and psychological.
The winners will be the children who know how to be bored.
These are the children who can sit in silence without panicking; who can read without craving interruption; who can delay gratification; who can channel boredom into thought.
Boredom is not emptiness. It is potential cognitive energy. Think about that.
Historically, boredom gave us thought leadership in mathematics, philosophy, jurisprudence, theology, and science. Because boredom is the soil from which ideas grow. Children who never experience boredom never develop inner worlds. They become dependent on external stimulation to feel alive.
And such minds do not lead civilizations. They consume them.
Reading as Resistance
Reading feels “hard” today because it offers no instant reward.
There are no flashing lights, no social validation, no algorithmic encouragement.
Reading involves just two things: you and thought, both moving slowly, deliberately, sometimes painfully, toward understanding. And yet, it is precisely this mental friction — this grappling with other points of view, sometimes contradictory to your own — that makes reading indispensable. It produces thinkers and leaders: people who ask hard questions, who unsettle certainty, who jolt societies out of complacency.
The child who reads not because it is assigned, but because it is enjoyed — quietly and stubbornly — is already rare. In ten years, they will be invaluable. They are the ones the world will turn to for direction.
- These are the minds that will interpret laws instead of reacting to slogans.
- The minds that will design systems instead of being trapped inside them.
- The minds that will think when others scroll.
What We Are Really Deciding
This is not about nostalgia. It is not about rejecting technology. It is about recognizing asymmetry.
A child’s mind is defenseless against systems designed to exploit it.
When we choose convenience over restraint, silence over confrontation, and comfort over responsibility, we are making a decision — not just for our children, but for the future of thought itself.
Civilizations are not destroyed by external enemies alone; they are undone when they stop producing minds capable of steering them.
And that loss, unlike market crashes or political failures, cannot be reversed easily. Once a generation loses the ability to think deeply, the damage echoes forward.
Something To Think About
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Socrates’ parents had handed him a smartphone — just to keep him occupied, out of their hair, so he wouldn’t bother them.
I don’t know much about his family life, but one thing I am certain of: the world would have lost Socrates long before Athens ever did. And humanity would have been poorer for it.