On Cell Phones, Sadness, and Resiliency

Posted by DJL on Oct 14, 2013 in Parenting | 2 comments

I saw this video a few weeks ago and loved it. But I also hesitated to put it on my blog. It’s another video of Louis C.K., the comedian who I think is a very astute student of human nature and our culture. It’s on his hesitancy to give his kids cell phones. While naming some of the detrimental social conditioning he thinks cell phones promote – not making eye contact, always looking down – he goes beyond that to talk about the ways in which we us our phones to avoid sadness. Rather than feel sad, we look for something meaningless to do, like sending a text. In fact, Louis believes there’s a value to feeling sad, a value to actually feeling things, even hard things, rather than constantly numbing difficult feelings, because then we learn how to be resilient. (Something we talked about last week in relation to developing grit.)

So that’s why I loved this video. I hesitated to post it hear because some of what he says, and even more how he says it, may offend some readers of this blog. I don’t, I have to admit, find him particularly offensive – except of course when he challenges my assumptions and beliefs! ☺ But then three different folks sent me a link and said they thought I’d like this and others might too, so I’ve taken their advice and put it here. It’s not just for parents, of course – although I think his advice to parents that it’s okay if your kids are a little weird because of doing something good is worth considering. It’s about all of us who are tempted to fill our empty moments with even more empty texts and risk never developing resilience (let alone risk crashing our cars while texting!).

So you’ve been warned – this video is brilliant and wise and at times a tad vulgar, and as it turns out those three things sometimes aren’t mutually exclusive.

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