A client's story · identifying details changed

Best Friends

When they arrived, it started immediately.

They walked through my door with a Nintendo Switch and three phones. They were close friends we had not seen in more than two years. Within twenty minutes, one of them had started work calls. On a Saturday afternoon. In our house. She did not even close the door.

My husband took his friend out for a walk. He had been waiting for this. His friend had his phone out the whole time, checking it constantly, not listening.

At one point my husband suggested somewhere to get a drink. We have lived here for years. He knows every place. His friend held up a finger, opened ChatGPT, and typed the question in.

“It is easier this way,” he said. “Where is a good place to get a drink around here?”

He teaches executives how to be present for a living. He charges them for it.

Their daughter was eight. She had been tested for ADD. I watched her pick up a toy, hold it for two minutes, put it down. Next one. Three minutes. Next. Two minutes. She was in a room full of toys with a child she had not seen in over a year and she said she was bored.

We finally all went for a walk. It was the thing we had planned. Within minutes, one of the adults was on the phone to somebody else, planning a birthday party and ignoring us.

Then the Nintendo Switch came out.

My son came running out of the room screaming so hard he could not get the words out. His face was red and twisted and wet. He threw himself at me, fists balled, sobbing, trying to speak between gasps. His whole body was shaking. The other child appeared in the doorway behind him, holding the device with both hands, eyes flat.

I took it and put it in the closet.

It got worse. Crying. Screaming. My son on the floor pounding it with his fists. The other child kicking the wall. Two children who had not seen each other in over a year, in a house full of toys, on a beautiful afternoon. Shaking and wailing over a screen.

Eventually they calmed down. Eventually they played together.

Then came dinner. And the FaceTime. And the Apple Watch. And the scrolling. And the eight-year-old texting someone none of us knew while a child on a screen asked if she was listening.

At bedtime she needed the phone to fall asleep. She was eight years old. She could not fall asleep in silence.

My husband was quiet for a long time after they left. Not angry. Something worse. He looked like a man who had just found out something about the world that he could not unfind out.

He said we need to set parameters if we are going to do this again.

I do not think we will.