What’s a “neurotransmitter?” It’s a hormone, meaning it’s a chemical or a drug, like adrenaline or endorphins, that the body releases in needful situations. Oxytocin helps bond people and is released, for example, when a mother nurses her child or two spouses come together. Without God’s gift of oxytocin, there would be a lot more divorces—it gives parents sufficient feelings of bonding to stay together when the going gets rough. Without oxytocin, it would be much harder to take joy in any close human relationship, because our annoyance would outweigh our delight in that other person. Smartphones can provide dopamine hits (excited pleasure) but not oxytocin (long lasting joy) because the latter requires eye-to-eye contact and/or physical touch.
If used indiscriminately, screens are not only addicting but rather joyless. If you are staring at a phone instead of making eye contact with people, you will not get enough oxytocin to keep existential loneliness at bay. Young people, especially, tend to use machines incorrectly if not given adequate training. No one puts a 15-year-old behind a steering wheel without training them, and no one should put a phone in a 15-year-old's hand without training. The studies show that we are not giving our children adequate training or age-specific support. Young people are getting sadder and more isolated the more we leave them alone with their phones. It’s worth noting that “smart” countries, like France, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands, have banned smartphones from schools.
When I was fourteen, Mom banished TV from our home. Before that we were allowed to watch four primetime TV shows a week, plus Saturday morning cartoons. Little House and the Prairie was one of those four shows, but TV was becoming too prurient for Mom and Dad. He especially deplored televised violence, so Mom did away with the cathode ray tube altogether. Dad had long been advocating for that, turning off the TV every time he heard gunshots from the box.
In disobedience to Mom’s new rule, I hid a little TV under my bed. I continued watching Little House on the Prairie on Wednesday nights, but at low volume and from a little mirror placed opposite the bed. If Mom unexpectedly came into the room, I would yank a string tied to the wall switch. Besides being a mortal sin (Commandment Number Four), this innovation made everything appear backwards: the mirror reversed the TV image. So instead of Mr. Ingalls riding from left to right through the prairie, his horse went from right to left. I thought I was pretty smart, and I dreamed of someday inventing a radio with a little tv screen in it, so I could take my favorite shows with me wherever I went.
My dream has come true. I carry a little radio with me that has a screen with unlimited TV shows, movies, and music at the tap of a finger. Since the 1970s, however, New York and Los Angeles have amped up the prurience. It’s up to Dads and Moms to do what mine did forty-five years ago: écrasez l'infâme. It can be done, and it is being done. That’s the good news in Clare Morell’s The Tech Exit book. Maybe I can coin the word texit to describe how families are doing the needful. They getting rid of the screens and bravely enduring the 30-day withdrawal period. Some young people even suffer the delirium tremens, or at least pretend to, as they withdraw, but on the other side they are stronger, smarter, and more loving than before their addiction. Like France and the Netherlands, I’ve banished cell phones from my school. When parents see the results, they get serious about keeping their children safe from screens at home. “I can talk with my daughter again!” they tell me with joy. “She can do her homework in half the time now! She is so much happier, and the whole family is more peaceful!”
The French government and Fr. Illo have banned “smart” phones from our schools. But that’s only 40 hours a week, when school is in session. What about the other 128 hours of your child’s life? Or your life, for that matter? “Only you, dear parents, can prevent forest fires.” So do the needful, and get rid of the problem.