Ross: Resistance to screen time is getting more futile by the moment

Along with everything else, this past year will be remembered as the year all of us gave up on screen time.

It might actually be more useful to keep track of your reality time than your screen time at this point.

And I know it’s left me – and possibly you, too – with an unspoken sense of dread: The Fear Of Forgetting Our Phone, or FO-FOP. And its even scarier cousins – Fear of Losing Our Phone, and Fear of Breaking Our Phone, FO-LOP and FO-BOP.

How many times have I started patting myself down in a panic at 60 miles an hour realizing I left without the phone? What do you do? Wave a flag? Shoot a flare? How can I tell my wife I forgot the phone unless I turn around and get the phone?

I wasn’t always like this. Colleen can testify that I held off getting a smart phone until KIRO thrust one into my reluctant hands. Because I knew I would love it too much.

And what brought all this home was a revelation I had over the weekend.

We have framed snapshots of the kids all over the house, and I browse them from time to time, and so the other day, I picked up of a photo of one of the girls, and I saw a detail in the background, and without thinking, I put my thumb and index finger on the glass to enlarge it … and nothing happened – because it was a photograph!

Pretty soon I’ll be pressing the remote to change the subject at dinner.

Face it – you CAN’T tell kids not to be engaged in the technology they’re growing up with. They will assume that all photos can be re-shaped, they will accept that robots can dance, and that the car knows exactly where it’s going.

And that Grandpa is just a recurring YouTube video of some guy saying, “oh, you’re so cute!”

That’s just how it is.

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