[Erin] Entertaining ourselves to death

The list below reminds me of a "toy" commercial I saw recently--except that it wasn't really a commercial for a toy. Instead, it's a commercial showing a man giving his wife and children each a high-end cell phone, before revealing that he has, of course, kept the best one for himself.

And if a company here in Texas has its way, pretty soon your kids will each be clamoring for their own phone (if they aren't already) just for the games. Computer game company id Software wants to bring cell phone games out of the classic game era and into what it sees as a new and bright future for cell phone gaming.

I'll admit that I'm not a video game person. The limited access our children have to video games centers around time spent with their dad, who has always enjoyed certain video games and is glad to play only those games our girls can play with him. I know the girls appreciate the time they get to spend with daddy, sharing his enjoyment of video games, but I also know that this sort of entertainment can be addictive if it's not kept within reasonable limits.

Parents may disagree on what constitutes reasonable limits for all kinds of electronic entertainment: video games, television, computer time, and so on; and these limits may vary widely depending on children's ages or other responsibilities. But I have a lot more common ground with parents who try to set limits and keep the allure of the newest technology and most dazzling game from becoming an obsession to a relatively young child than I do with parents who see no problem at all with their kids being plugged in, tuned in, online, and so on for the better part of each day.

The notion that cell phones are rapidly becoming tiny mobile entertainment centers is troubling to me. For one thing, it seems that parents who are trying to set limits on their children's use of these types of technology are going to find their children immersed in it in the surrounding community; for another, if mom and dad is always connected or always being entertained children will sense a hypocrisy in the limits being placed on their own electronic entertainment privileges.

And why do we need cell phone games, or cell phone televisions, or cell phone web access, anyway? So we won't have to smile pleasantly at the stranger in line with us at the post office? So we won't be bored for the twenty-six seconds it takes the elevator to reach our floor, and the additional seventeen it takes for us to reach the floor a few levels down where our meeting is being held? So we won't miss a second of streaming video coverage of what in retrospect will be a non-event, during time that would otherwise be "wasted" in a relatively pleasant walk from the store to our parked car? So our companies and employers can not only reach us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by phone, but insist on spontaneous video conferencing as well?

We can't acquire a sense of community with our faces intent on the pocket-sized screen in the palm of our hands. We can't admire the unexpected beauty of a robin's song when the pellet-shaped buds in our ears deafen us to his presence. We can't experience even a moment of peace, when the voice on the other end of the line constantly demands our attention, our focus, our energy.

We can't appreciate life, if all we are doing is entertaining ourselves to death.