I wish mum's phone was never invented
A smartphone isn&#x27;t an activity; it&#x27;s a virtual place where activities happen. Kids (and, apparently, opinion-piece writers) don&#x27;t usually understand this.<p>&quot;My mom is on her phone too much!&quot; could <i>actually</i> mean any&#x2F;all of:<p>• my mom is a workaholic<p>• my mom is always chatting with her friends she had to move away from to give me a better place to live<p>• my mom is flirting on Tinder with my stepfather-to-be<p>• my mom is tired from work and zones out watching Youtube videos<p>• my mom is &quot;addicted&quot; to knowing what celebrities are up to so she has water-cooler conversation to share<p>• my mom is in a self-perpetuating fear spiral, feeding herself every horrible news story she can find even though she hates the feeling of reading them, and should probably see a therapist<p>• my mom is addicted to showing off on Facebook<p>• my mom likes reading books<p>Every one of these <i>activities</i> existed before smartphones; they just occurred in different places&#x2F;formats.<p>You&#x27;d buy tabloids for the celebrity news; you&#x27;d watch the nightly news on cable; you&#x27;d flirt in bars; you&#x27;d travel to visit friends, or have long, nightly telephone calls with them; and you&#x27;d keep up with the real Joneses next-door instead of keeping up with the virtual Joneses on Facebook. And you&#x27;d be a workaholic by always being at the office, rather than by being home but inattentive.