My little brother spends all his downtime on his tablet. I know that’s not an uncommon thing to say. It seems like every kid these days spends more of their time online or playing menial games than actually experiencing the world.
Whenever I talk about it aloud, I get a weird feeling though. Like I’m already one of those old people that doesn’t understand the younger kids. But I’m not old. I’m finishing up my final month of my Sophomore year as I write this.
You see, I know there are a lot of consequences that stem from letting a kid grow up terminally online. I’ve met plenty of classmates with less people skills than the virtual assistant on their phones, and I know how they got that way.
My brother is in the 5th grade. He doesn’t really talk much to other kids in his school. And I know that because he told me. The only time he ever has actual conversations with me is on our drives after I pick him up from school.
My parents work a lot, which meant that I had to get my hardship license to be able to pick him up instead. Could he ride the bus? Yes he could. But my parents don’t want him getting bullied by the other kids. I told them he needs to interact with people his age, but they don’t like getting parenting advice from a teenager.
Anyway, the only time we talk is during the car rides, but even those are getting progressively more silent. I could tell all he cared about was getting home to hop on that tablet. Then one day when I went to pick him up, he was just sitting on a bench outside the school, staring intensely at his tablet. Playing some game and completely unaware of the world around him.
I knew he wasn’t allowed to bring it to school, but at first I was just too busy to care. I pulled up in front of him and waited for him to notice. He didn’t. I rolled down the window and yelled his name. Still he didn’t react. With the line of cars behind me getting increasingly more impatient, I felt the need to act.
I resorted to honking, which got me dirty looks from the parents walking their kids from the building. I got out of the car and made my way up to the bench. I told him to get off of that tablet and get in the car, but even though I was feet from the bench he still didn’t react. I swiped the tablet from his hands. They grasped at the air where it was a moment before. His eyes delayed in tracking the motion. The wailing followed. Shrill shrieking that caused everyone around to look at the two of us.
I dragged my brother to the car by the collar of his shirt. I had never felt so much embarrassment in my life. I can honestly say that tears began to fill my eyes on the short walk back to my vehicle.
But when my mom got home, and I told her, she didn’t care. He was still crying, a full hour later, just because he couldn’t play his game.
“Just give him the tablet!” she snapped. “I have to get dinner ready and I don’t want to keep listening to his whining.”
I couldn’t believe it. How could she still not see how messed up his brain was getting? How could she still just parent on autopilot? I resolved to wait for my dad to get home. I had to believe he would be sensible.
The second I heard his work truck pull into the driveway, I sprung to action. Right as he crossed the threshold I informed him of the issue. Of how bad it was. Of how nothing was getting done.
He sighed. He patted me on the shoulder and told me he’d take care of it after dinner.
My dad decided to make us sit at the table for dinner; something that we hadn’t done in as long as I could remember. He had my brother and I set out the silverware and cups. My brother listened, but held the tablet with him the whole time. He tossed the silverware onto the dining room table and took a seat, pulling up his game.
“Dad!” I insisted. “See what he does.”
But my father didn’t attempt to stop my brother until all four of us were sitting and eating. He asked how our days were. He listened to my mom talk about work and to me talk about a teacher I didn’t like.
My brother spent the entirety of the conversation deeply invested in a game that I could only get glimpses of. A kaleidoscope of colors bursting and popping with every swipe of his finger. The faint sound of upbeat music and zany sound effects underscored our spaghetti supper.
“Did you do anything fun today, sport?” my dad asked.
No response. Just the sound of a slight crescendo to highlight some meaningless advancement.
“Buddy,” he continued. This time he softly knocked the wooden table to alert my brother but to no avail.
“Liam,” my mother said sternly. “Listen to your father.”
It wasn’t until I grabbed his tablet away, this time with a slight struggle that he made any noise. Once again no words save for elongated shrieks.
The dinner was ruined. I was told to go get ready for bed while my parents handled the situation. I tried to protest but my father pulled me aside.
“I understand your frustration,” he said. His words were only barely audible beneath the screams of our other two family members. “Believe me I know how it feels to not always agree on the best way to raise a child. And I know that we’ve asked you to step into that role, but without giving you all the tools. I’ll take care of it, okay. You just go be a teenager for a bit. Leave the parenting to me for once.”
I relented as he hugged me and sent me off with a ruffle of my hair.
Sometime into my shower, I stopped hearing the screams and thanked my dad under my breath for finally bringing some order to the household. Even if only for a moment.
As I walked back to my room, putting my hair up in a towel to dry, I saw through the open door of my brother’s room my father and him playing that game. I knocked on the wall, catching only my father’s attention.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “How was your shower?”
“Why are you playing that game? You need to take the tablet away from him.”
My father lifted himself up from the twin sized bed and walked over to me. He spoke softly as he explained.
“Sometimes being harsh isn’t the best option. I feel like the reason your brother is getting so involved in the tablet is because he doesn’t feel valued at home. Your mother and I, we’re always working. And I know even when we’re not we don’t necessarily spend quality time with you two. I’m just trying to show some interest in his interests. Then maybe I can work that into playing some catch outside. Going for a hike. Who knows?”
“Dad…”
He kissed me on the forehead. “Go on now, kid. Let me handle it. It really is a fun game anyway.”
I awoke the next morning to the jarring buzzes of my alarms. After the third round of jolts, when the time didn’t allow for any more snoozes, I dragged myself out of bed to get ready for school. I knocked on my brother’s now closed bedroom door and told him to start getting ready.
Midway through the rhythmic brushing of my teeth I realized I couldn’t hear him moving around. Not wanting to be late to school myself, I once again knocked, this time louder and more obnoxious.
“Liam! Get up!” I yelled.
The time was now too late for us to be punctual if I dropped him off, but missing the first hour wasn’t an option for me. I had to get to school for a very important unit exam.
“Fine,” I relented through his locked door. “You can explain to Mom why you stayed home today.”
Down the steps and around to my car I scurried. I was stopped suddenly by another disturbance in my morning routine. Usually my car was the only one in the driveway at this hour. Both my parents should have been off to work by now. But as I rounded the corner and unlocked my vehicle remotely, I saw the large body of my father’s white work pickup.
“Dad,” I said as I wandered through the empty master bedroom. “If you can hear me, take Liam to school. I can’t be late.”
I wasn’t, thankfully. I made it through the door of the classroom just a moment before the first bell rang. Only, while the teacher passed out the papers, and while I stared blankly at the questions, I couldn’t help but be distracted by that morning’s occurrences.
When the teacher announced that we only had ten minutes left of exam time, I was hardly halfway finished. I rushed through the rest of the answers. The short essay questions were considerably shorter essays than was probably expected. Nonetheless, I avoided getting any zeros.
Immediately after my first class, I hurried to the nurse’s office. I sold her some stories of a painful headache and a congested nose. She could tell I was lying, I was never good at it, but she gave me a slip regardless.
“Just take the day off, sweetheart. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Now back at home, I rummaged through the junk drawer in the kitchen to find a skinny metal pick. It was the key to unlock the inner doors of the home. After struggling briefly to work the doorknob, I finally was able to enter my brother’s room.
“Dad,” I said, startled at the sight of him.
He wore the same clothes that he had last night. His eyes were dark and baggy. Most worrying of all, however, was that he held my brother’s tablet in his hands. He stared emotionless at the screen and at the rainbow effects emanating from it.
My brother lay unconscious next to him on the bed. He too wore the same outfit from last night and I wondered if they had truly been here the whole time.
Cautiously, I stepped into the room. For a moment I looked over the burly shoulder of my father at the screen. I watched as his oversized fingers swiped and clicked at the cues from the game. I shook him gently, but got no response.
“Dad, why didn’t you go to work?”
No answer.
“Did you stay up all night?”
Still nothing.
I switched positions to stare into his eyes. Though I sat directly in front of him, he did not sway his attention. I watched the faint reflection of the game dance on the glazed eyes of my father. Not once did he blink. Not once did his pupils flicker. They stayed concentrated on the game. Whites bloodshot. Pupils dilated.
I hesitated briefly, scared of what might happen. I took the tablet away.
The trance was broken.
His attention was now unwavering upon me. I saw anger. I saw desperation.
“Give it back,” he said.
No. He threatened me.
Never before had I felt so much fear from my father. My whole life he had been kind and soft spoken despite his large and intimidating appearance. Never in my life had I worried about him wanting anything but the best for me. Never until that moment.
He snatched the tablet back. He returned to his trance. Tears welled up in my eyes. My breathing, which I had not realized had stopped, now returned to normal.
Quietly and carefully I gathered up my younger brother in my arms. I had no reason to be cautious now. My father cared only about the screen.
I sat on the couch with my brother sleeping on my lap. I ran the situation many times over in my head. It was while I was deep in thought, caressing my brother’s hickory colored hair, that my mother entered the home.
She called out for my brother. She asked him loudly while rising up the steps why he was absent from school. She rounded the corner to see the two of us. I saw the anger for once melt away. My face no doubt had given away a barrage of emotions.
“What’s wrong, babe,” she said to me softly. “Is Liam sick?”
I began to cry and she held me tightly. She held my cheek to her chest and I smelled the lavender perfume coming from her soft, knit sweater. After a moment, I told her what had happened. I told her that Dad was now addicted to the game as well.
She clicked her tongue softly. She told me that she would take care of it. I begged her not to grab the tablet away, but she didn’t listen. I slipped out from underneath Liam’s body. As I left him to rest on the couch, I followed my mother to his room where my father still sat.
“Give me the damn tablet, Mark,” she insisted.
When he ignored her, she did as I had and took the device from his hands.
Once again his trance was broken and his eyes were now intently on my mother.
“Don’t look at me like that. Quit being so immat—”
He struck her. I gasped at the sight of a harsh and violent slap. He tried to wrestle the tablet from my mother’s hand but she pulled away and we both ran to seek refuge in the master bedroom.
As my once peaceful and kind father shook the doorknob relentlessly, we sat on the bed. I witnessed tears drop onto my mother’s now reddened cheek.
“I’m deleting this damn app,” she said.
I held her hand. “Are you going to call the cops on Dad?” I asked.
She only answered with a sigh.
“One thing at a time, baby.”
I watched my mother attempt to navigate the game. She looked through the menu for some way to exit out of the app but found nothing. She tried to turn off the tablet with the button at the side, but once again nothing.
The doorknob was now silent. We heard my father’s body slump against the ground and the snores take over. My mother set the tablet aside and opened the door to see my now sleeping father. We dragged him to the bed and then my mother sent me to put Liam in his.
“Go to your room when you’re done,” she said. “I’ll have a talk with your father when he wakes up.”
“I–I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“You won’t, babe. You’ll be in the house. You’ll hear if anything happens.”
I couldn’t bear to be alone. Instead of going to my room, I laid next to my brother and hugged him gently. My mind raced through a thousand questions. The most pressing to me was whether my family would ever be truly normal again after what had happened between my parents.
At some point I drifted off into a nap. I dreamt not of my family or of anything other than the colorful patterns and figures of the game on the tablet. I was woken by the shifting of my brother as he opened his eyes. He looked around his room as I rubbed mine.
“Where’s my tablet?” he asked. It was the first cohesive sentence I had heard him speak in over a day.
“Mom has it. She’s already deleted the game, so don’t even think about—”
But he already marched away.
I followed him to the master bedroom. We entered and I saw something that filled me with dread. Something that if anyone else had seen it, they would have dismissed it as completely ordinary. I saw my father sleeping on one side of the bed and my mother completely transfixed with the tablet on the other.
“Mom,” I said. “I thought you were going to delete that game.”
I received no response from her, just as I had feared. Liam rushed over to grab the tablet away. The two began to wrestle over the device and my anxiety soared.
Quickly, I pulled my phone from my pocket. I opened the app store and searched for the game whose name I had seen in bright rainbow colors on the tablet.
Liam took the phone from my hand like a hawk snatching up its prey. He sat on the carpet of the bedroom and played. My mother laid on the bed and played. My father began to toss and turn.
I hurried to grab his phone from his pocket. I unlocked it using his face ID and downloaded another copy. All three sat together as if in deep meditation. All three completely bound to their devices. To that game.
My stomach grumbled once everything was done. I realized I hadn’t eaten once today. As I searched the kitchen for food, I realized that none of my family had eaten either. I placed the leftovers from last night’s meal in the microwave to heat up. I stood at the door frame and asked hesitantly if anyone was hungry. Even though I knew I would receive no response, the silence still unnerved me.
Like babies, I fed them. One at a time. They opened their mouths and chewed the food, but paid no attention to it. No attention to me. As I fed my three family members, I tried desperately but in vain not to glance at their screens.
After I was finished I hurried out of the room to sit on the couch. I felt my skin begin to itch and I felt my mind begin to buzz.
I fought away the urges.
I rocked myself back and forth.
Scratched at my forearms.
Scratched at my neck.
Eventually, I returned to the room where my family remained in place. I grabbed my mother’s phone from her nightstand and called 911.
Scratching at my scalp and itching every inch of open skin, I watched as the paramedics wheeled my family away. They stared at me and asked if I was okay the entire ambulance ride. We made it to the hospital and they treated me for a panic attack.
I did begin to feel better. They hesitated but eventually allowed me to return home. Now I sit here in my room. I write all this out. But typing is getting more difficult. The itching is so much worse.
Like bugs. Like a thousand, million insects crawling between muscle and skin. My mind is like a bee hive. I have to keep stopping. I have to keep itching.
I gave in and downloaded the game.
Playing it makes me feel good. Everything washes away. Cold water runs down my brain and into my body. Blissful nothingness. Pulling myself away is getting harder.
But I have to get this message out.
Pay attention.
Don’t download that game.
I won’t tell you its name.
It hurts.
It hurts too much.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Play the game.
Leaving it is agony.
Playing it is Euphoria.