TicTok. YouTube. Snapchat. Day in and day out, our children are rotting their brains staring at these stupid-making apps. What is the world coming to? Is it as bad as their grandparents might think? I would argue no.
The other day I was hanging out with my 16-year-old in his bedroom because – well, he’s 16: if I want to spend time with him, I go to him. I don’t wait for him to feel like coming to hang out with me. I would never see him. My son likes to play video games on his tv while simultaneously watching YouTube videos. On this day, I asked him what he was watching. He said, “Oh, it’s just some video about Satan.”
Wut?
My son does this to me often. The things he finds to watch on YouTube are varied and interesting. Sometimes he’s watching something mind-numbingly stupid, but often he is learning about interesting topics that most people wouldn’t think to put in front of a teenage boy who doesn’t care much for school. On this day, it turned out that my son was listening to some guy compare and contrast how Chaucer and Milton treat Satan in The Canterbury Tales and Paradise Lost.
Mind. Blown.
It’s official. I have a master’s degree in English, but somehow my video game-playing, YouTube video-watching teenager officially knows more about English literature than I do. Sure, I can give you a list of contemporary British novels that I have read over the past couple of years (Queenie, for example,) but I have never – nor will I ever – read The Canterbury Tales or Paradise Lost. I would rather pull my own wisdom teeth.
Is it possible that all the time – or at least some of the time – that these kids are spending staring at their screens might be good for them? I would argue yes. Why do we waste so much time railing against the technology and brainstorming ideas to keep their devices out of our classrooms when we could be putting that technology to good use? Believe it or not, our kids are already doing it.
Come on, Gramps. Ask your granddaughter what’s the most interesting thing she learned on TikTok this week. Her answer might surprise you!
Write on the World 
I changed my mind about screens when I was corrected about how bees make honey. Both my kids knew everything about how honey is made. I laughed as they explained it to me, because I was certain honey was bee poop. I don’t like it when they try on another YouTube personality, though, but I suppose that’s all a part of learning and growing. When I see this, I try to remind them they’re much better off being themselves, because they are an endless list of all things wonderful, and there’s only one them, so be it and be proud.