Mean Screen

It’s not a religious thing, to be perfectly honest. Although, with the stuff I’ve learned from my teen clients, screen time is definitely not one of the things that increases a commitment to Yiddishkeit.

I’m not quite sure where and when I developed this strong aversion to screen time. By screen time, I am referring to any video — even a Jewish one — or game that is played on a computer, handheld device, or the like. I’m not referring to watching a shiur, being part of an interactive class, learning a skill (like piano, baking, changing a flat tire, or typing), or doing something otherwise productive.

Could be I’m old, actually pretty old, as it was only when I was in high school that video cassettes and VCRs become commonly available. But when I was pretty newly married with a pretty new baby, and it was the rage to buy those fancy handheld camcorders that made videos that could be transferred onto video cassettes, I absolutely refused. I have no idea why. I only knew that I didn’t want to go near anything remotely connected to a video machine; from watching videos of my baby it was too close a step to watching anything else that was not necessarily baby-related.

The truth is that even though I wish I had those baby videos, and I loved watching those old videos that my sisters have dug up in their houses of Chanukah parties from 20 years ago when my grandparents were still alive (yes! I watched them! I’m already not listening to my own essay!), I still don’t regret that decision that kept my children — and now grandchildren — away from that silly pastime.

So what did my kids do all day, you want to know?

I read to them. And they read by themselves. And they played Stratego. And Monopoly (yes, they cheated sometimes, but as long as they were learning math and mortgages and reading about taxes, it was worth it). We also baked cookies and chocolate cake. And painted. And played with playdough. But most of the time, they kvetched and fought and potched each other and cried and made me crazy with their fighting and teasing and mess-making. Especially when they played clubhouse and tent-making, using every single pillow and blanket in the house and fell off the bunkbed and cried some more.

They also rode bikes. And rollerbladed. And climbed trees. And when each of my kids turned three, they got their very own toolbox with a hammer and nails and pieces of sandpaper. And my daughter said she didn’t want a toolbox and I was surprised and bought her a doll instead and she used scotch tape and duct tape to make baby outfits out of paper and finally, her grandmother bought her a sewing machine for Chanukah and she was thrilled.

One son got a guitar and lessons, the other a keyboard, and they all learned how to lein for their bar mitzvah and made Purim signs for their classroom in Adar and they organized carnivals on the block, even though the cheder specifically said no carnivals allowed but I figured it was better than them watching videos. And the whole class walked across the street to our block to plan and create the carnival and nobody was watching videos for all those hours so I’m sure the cheder didn’t really mind. The money went for tzedakah, maybe even to the yeshiva. Who knows.

Sometimes, my kids even did homework.

“Mommy,” one of my boys once threatened me when he was preparing to go to camp, “if you not going to buy us Gameboys like the whole camp has, we’re just going to use somebody else’s. And you know what happens to kids whose parents don’t let them have what everyone else has?”

“No,” I said, genuinely curious. “What happens to kids whose parents don’t let them have what everyone else has?”

My son, the mini psychologist even then, said, “They want to do it more!”

But this son was wrong. Because he grew up to sit and learn many, many hours a day, and nights too, and his kids don’t watch videos or have any videogames. As a matter of fact, when they ask for presents (birthday, Chanukah, afikoman, Rosh Chodesh, whatever), they know the rule is nothing electronic. The poor kids are stuck with games like Risk and scooters and rollerblades and enough Lego to fill a room.

When my Hillel was six years old and newly diagnosed with cancer, we landed in the hospital. When we were admitted to the room, a well-meaning guest who arrived to offer support, immediately flicked on the television near him. And I immediately flicked it off.

“Mindy,” said this well-meaning guest, “what is Hillel going to do for the next few weeks in the hospital, after brain surgery and radiation and all the rest of the horrible stuff, if he can’t watch television?”

I was astounded. There was no way my son, who said Tehillim in his free time, who had just learned to read a day before his admittance to the hospital, would waste precious time stolen from death by watching inane shows. “I will read to him and play games with him,” I said. “He won’t be bored.”

When a week later, after brain surgery, and suddenly paralyzed on one side of his body and relegated to a wheelchair, some family friends walked into his hospital room and handed him an expensive set of videogames, he looked at me and I looked at him and said, “You can open it, play with it for a half hour and then we are giving it to Mekimi for other kids with cancer.”

He sighed and a half hour later it was gone. We went back to racing his wheelchair down the hallway and visiting the library and arts n’ crafts room and shmoozing with the therapists and other boring stuff like that.

It’s COVID-19 time and children have been without school or structure or friends or extended family and bikes and rollerblades and sun and grass and swings and monkey bars. It’s so easy to give in to screen time. A great babysitter. A great way to stop the kvetching and fighting and crying and give Mommy a chance to sit down and catch her breath for just a few minutes.

It’s a heavy price to pay for children whose natural curiosity, creativity, love of learning and experimenting will be stifled and dulled by the screen. You won’t know it until they can’t sit still for a Rebbi’s class that lacks the fast action of the screen, for homework that needs focused concentration on plain white paper with black words and numbers, for those endless bein hazmanim days when they whine, “I’m so bo-o-ored,” unable to occupy themselves, when they bring you their projects because their creativity has dried up.

Hold on a little bit longer, sings Avraham Fried. Because if you don’t, their minds won’t either.

It’s just plain mean to give them the screen.

Originally published in Binah Magazine