You're Not "Addicted" To Your Phone — You're Just A Sh*tty Parent

In a new campaign video, Start-Rite interviewed a bunch of kids and asked them how they feel about the internet and smart phones and how people use them. According to this video, a lot of these kids feel that their parents spend too much time on their phones. It makes the kids feel lonely and ignored by their parents.

Are these parents addicted to their phones? No, they’re just bad parents.

Obviously, if you’re a parent, when your kid is around, you should be paying attention to them. That's not exactly revolutionary parenting advice. 

It’s one thing if you’re trying to get work done but let’s be honest: most people aren’t glued to their smartphones for work stuff. Also, we all don’t need to be on our phones as much as we are, period.

Phones have put us in constant contact with each other, and it turns out, we don’t need that. The reality is that most people only need to be in contact with other people for about a half hour a day. That’s how long the average person is interesting for. Anything more than that and you’re just wasting time.

So, regardless of whether or not you have kids, stop arguing, you can put down the phone. Since you’re not doing anything you have to do when you’re on your phone AND it makes your kid feel bad, STOP DOING IT.

We’ve all seen parents like this.

They’re the sort of person who's on Facebook all day bragging about being a tiger mom but they obviously aren’t because they’re on Facebook all day. These parents are the first to defend themselves with “you have no idea what it’s like to raise a child.”

Well, neither do you because you spend all day trying to collect likes on Facebook. We both have the same level of parenting experience, the difference being that I don’t have a kid so I don’t need to develop my parenting skills.

These parents aren’t "addicted" to their phones; that’s not a thing that happens. They’re just not interested in their kids.

That might sound harsh, but guess what? People use their phones when their bored. If I’m out and I’m having a great time, I forget that my phone is in my pocket. You never see someone on a roller coaster using their phone.

If you see me at a party and I’ve got my face buried in my phone, that’s because it’s a lame party. Why would it be any different for raising kids?

Look, I get it. You’re kids are kind of boring, and the internet is kind of not boring. Your kid wants to watch the same cartoon again, or play with the same toy, or listen to the same song over and over again. Raising kids is, in all honesty, tedious but you still have to do it, so put your damn phone down already.

Look your kid in the face and make eye contact with them or else your kid is just going to grow up to be another dead-eyed hipster who thinks he’s the only person who truly appreciates art.

Go outside, throw a ball around with your kid, teach them how to chop down a tree, do anything with them.

But put down the f*cking phone, okay?