I'm Just Going To Put It Out There, Our Parents Are Addicted To Their Phones More Than We Are

It’s a universally established fact that parents are found glued to their phones more often than their millennial children. No matter how much our caregivers might fight this unacknowledged truth, this is the bitter-sweet reality.

I was recently out for dinner with my parents when I realised that instead of looking at their menus, my parents were literally staring into their smartphones, reading out WhatsApp forwards to each other.

And in that moment I couldn’t help but remember the number of times in the past when my parents would literally yell at me for even checking the time on my phone and accuse me of being “addicted” to my phone 24*7.

Now, as a 20-something-year old, I can, unfortunately, vouch for the fact that we all might have been in this weird situation with our parents at least once in our adult life, if not more. I’m sure your parents must have given you diverted attention while they’re playing Candy Crush and you’re trying to talk to them.

Like spending time on their phone has become such a huge part of our parent’s life that sometimes they don’t even understand why you’re mad at them for reading WhatsApp forwards instead of having a real conversation with you.

So, after being frustrating with them trying to multitask with their phone and kids, I couldn’t help but wonder why are our parents always on their phones. And that’s when a very obvious yet ignored fact hit me.

If you think about it, every 90’s kids is literally an adult in 2020, which means that most of our parents are entering in their middle ages. For most of our parent’s adult life, they’ve worked their ass off to be responsible for us, fend for us and take care of us.

And now that we’re technically grown-up adults. They no longer have to take care of your needs, they have lesser responsibilities and more time to warm up to the digital realm, something that we grew up with.

And their portable, one-stop source for all entertainment is literally their mobile phones. I mean now that you come to think about it, on weekends, when we don’t feel like partying, we’re also mostly glued to our phones, catching up with people or Netflixing.

And well, if we’re being reasonable since our parents are older to us and have more life experience they technically have more friends and family to catch up with. I mean just think about it, our parents don’t only have to check up on us, they have to constantly be in touch with their parents, their cousins, your cousins and their friends.

And just to put it out there, mom-dad I don’t have an issue with you catching up with your friends and relatives, it is the forwarded WhatsApp university messages and you constantly flaunting your high scores on Candy Crush that really gets on our nerves.

And when you click pictures of literally everything to update your WhatsApp and Facebook stories, please stop doing that. Live in the moment for once, stop and smell the roses.

But have you ever thought about why is it that we have such a big issue when our parents are constantly using their phones and actually enjoying it, ding the same things we do with our friends? Is it because we cannot fathom not being the centre of their universe and not getting their attention?

Or is it because it’s very hypocritical of them to tell us that we’re “addicted” to our phones, whereas it’s the other way around. Maybe they’re just projecting when they say that.

Well, take a minute to put yourself in their shoes, they’re probably living their teenage years in 40s/50s. They were probably as old as we are right now when they had to take the responsibility of their firstborn child. Maybe we should cut them some slack.

All I’m trying to say is, Mom-Dad we don’t have an issue with you being glued to your phone as long as you don’t call us cellphone addicts.

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