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5 min

Part Two of Five — The Screen Between Us

In Part One, I asked a question.

What happens when we change the environment that forms a human being?

Now I want to go one step further.

Because perhaps we have been asking the wrong question about screens.

We count hours.

Two hours.

Four hours.

Six hours.

We argue about whether children should have phones at school.

We debate TikTok, gaming, social media and screen-time limits.

All important.

But perhaps the most profound change is harder to measure.

The screen hasn't simply added something to childhood.

It has placed something between the child and the world.

Between boredom and imagination.

Between frustration and persistence.

Between loneliness and seeking another human being.

Between a question and the struggle to find an answer.

Between wanting something and having to wait for it.

Between discomfort and escape.

And increasingly—

between the child and reality itself.

Here are seven things worth thinking about.

1. CHILDHOOD USED TO HAVE FRICTION

Think about how many important childhood experiences once began with something going wrong.

You couldn't do it.

You couldn't reach it.

You didn't understand.

Nobody came immediately.

You were bored.

Your friend disagreed with you.

The other children wouldn't play the game your way.

The toy broke.

The rain ruined your plans.

You lost.

You had to wait.

These things sound trivial.

They weren't.

They were friction.

And friction forced something to happen inside the child.

Think.

Try.

Negotiate.

Invent.

Wait.

Ask.

Fail.

Try again.

Sometimes cry.

Sometimes become angry.

Eventually continue.

Not every frustrating experience builds character. Too much stress can harm children, and children need support.

But remove ordinary manageable frustration altogether and another question appears:

Where does the practice come from?

Where do you practise waiting if you rarely wait?

Where do you practise boredom if boredom is eliminated within seconds?

Where do you practise solving small problems if somebody—or something—immediately solves them for you?

Where do you practise recovering from disappointment if discomfort is treated as something that must instantly disappear?

We often talk about resilience as though it were information we can teach.

It isn't only something a child knows.

It is something a child repeatedly does.

And perhaps some of the smallest frustrations of childhood were rehearsals for the much larger frustrations of adulthood.

2. BOREDOM HAS ACQUIRED AN OFF SWITCH

A child says:

"I'm bored."

For generations, that sentence created a problem for the child.

Now it can create a problem for the parent.

And the solution may be sitting twenty centimetres away.

A screen.

Tap.

Problem gone.

Except perhaps the problem wasn't boredom.

Perhaps boredom was the beginning of something.

3. THE MACHINE DOESN'T GET BORED WITH YOU

This is where the change becomes more interesting.

Human relationships are inconvenient.

Another person has their own mood.

Their own interests.

Their own needs.

They misunderstand you.

They interrupt.

They disagree.

They become tired of the game.

They want to talk about something else.

They say no.

They leave.

And through thousands of these tiny collisions, a child encounters one of the fundamental facts of human existence:

Other people are not extensions of you.

You have to read them.

Listen.

Compromise.

Notice.

Repair.

Sometimes apologise.

Sometimes accept that you won't get what you want.

Now compare that with an increasingly personalised digital environment.

The video is selected for you.

The feed learns you.

The game rewards you.

The algorithm watches what holds your attention and offers more.

And now AI introduces another dimension.

You can ask again.

Change the question.

Change the tone.

Request another answer.

Ask for something shorter.

Easier.

Funnier.

Kinder.

More reassuring.

More like you.

The technology itself isn't evil.

It can educate, translate, create, assist and open extraordinary possibilities for children.

That matters.

But the developmental question remains.

What happens when a growing part of a child's environment becomes extraordinarily good at accommodating the child?

Because another human being cannot do that indefinitely.

A marriage cannot.

A workplace cannot.

A classroom cannot.

A crying baby cannot.

An elderly parent cannot.

Reality eventually refuses to personalise itself.

And adulthood is full of things that cannot be swiped away.

4. ATTENTION IS NOT JUST SOMETHING WE HAVE

We talk constantly about children's attention spans.

Perhaps we should ask a different question.

What is training their attention?

Attention develops in an environment.

And much of the digital environment has every reason to prevent that attention from wandering elsewhere.

The next video.

The notification.

The reward.

The message.

The scroll.

The recommendation.

Something is always arriving.

So perhaps the question isn't simply:

"Why can't children concentrate?"

Perhaps it is:

"What have we trained them to concentrate on?"

5. SILENCE IS DISAPPEARING

Watch people waiting.

At a bus stop.

In a café.

At an airport.

In a queue.

Adults reach for the phone.

We should be careful before blaming children for copying the world we built for them.

They are watching us.

6. THEN THE SCREEN STARTED TALKING BACK

This is the point where I think the story changes again.

Television talked at the child.

The internet allowed the child to search.

Social media created feeds, feedback and audiences.

Algorithms learned preferences.

But generative AI can do something qualitatively different.

It can participate.

A child can ask it a question at midnight.

It answers.

Ask something embarrassing.

It answers.

Ask for reassurance.

It answers.

Ask for advice.

It answers.

Ask it to explain the world.

It answers.

And unlike a parent, teacher, sibling or friend, it doesn't need to sleep.

That could become an extraordinary educational tool.

It could help a child understand mathematics, practise a language, explore history, develop an idea or satisfy a curiosity at the exact moment it appears.

We should not pretend those possibilities are insignificant.

But neither should we pretend this is simply another screen.

For the first time, large numbers of children may grow up with access to a non-human intelligence capable of conversation, assistance and increasingly personalised interaction.

That raises questions we have barely begun to formulate.

When does assistance become dependence?

When does convenience replace struggle?

When does reassurance prevent a child from learning to sit with uncertainty?

What happens when a child prefers the predictable patience of a machine to the unpredictable complexity of another human being?

What happens when the machine becomes the first place they take a question?

Or a fear?

Or a secret?

I don't know.

But I think we should understand the scale of the transition.

The screen used to show the child the world.

Now the screen can respond to the child.

7. PERHAPS THE SCREEN ISN'T THE REAL SUBJECT

Perhaps this isn't ultimately about screens at all.

Perhaps it is about friction.

How much should childhood contain?

Which kinds help development?

Which kinds cause harm?

Which should technology remove?

And which should we be extremely careful about removing?

Because there is a difference between making childhood safer—

and making childhood frictionless.

We tend to imagine progress as the removal of difficulty.

Faster.

Easier.

Smoother.

More personalised.

More convenient.

And in countless areas of life, that is genuine progress.

But human development presents us with an uncomfortable possibility:

Some difficulties may have been doing something.

Waiting may have been doing something.

Boredom may have been doing something.

Losing may have been doing something.

Having to approach another child may have been doing something.

Not knowing may have been doing something.

Trying again may have been doing something.

Even hearing the word no may have been doing something.

Perhaps we removed some of the friction before asking what the friction was for.

And now we are introducing technology capable of removing considerably more.

That doesn't mean we should reject it.

It means we need to become much more intelligent about what we are giving away in exchange for convenience.

Because childhood isn't simply about keeping a child happy today.

Childhood is the construction site of the adult who must live tomorrow.

Which brings me back to the title.

THE SENSITIVE PSYCHOPATH

Sensitive to what?

We still aren't ready to answer that.

But perhaps we're getting closer.

Because a strange possibility is beginning to emerge:

Could we be creating children increasingly sensitive to discomfort while simultaneously removing many of the ordinary experiences through which humans once learned to tolerate it?

Hold that thought.

Because in Part Three, we need to look away from the child.

And look directly at us.

At the adults.

At the parents.

At the boundaries we stopped enforcing.

At the battles we stopped fighting.

At the devices we handed over.

And at the uncomfortable possibility that some of the behaviour we are worried about in children may have begun one generation earlier.

Raymond and Ken