4/9/2026
It is April 9th, 2026. You are a 50-something-year-old parent who works a formal, demanding job in transportation in desperation for retirement money. After coming home from a rough, long day at work, you decide to go check up on your beloved 20-something-year-old offspring, who's been inside of the house all day. They have been living with you since graduating high school and have never been formally employed. They were supposed to vaccuum almost the entire house today, but to your utter dissapointment, they have not completed their assigned task, judging from how filthy and disgusting the floors of these corridors still are. You knock the door to the bedroom they're residing in two times, and then open. When it comes to observing this room before addressing the situation to them, you find that the only outlets of entertainment your child posseses and actively engages in are a PC on their dusty desk, a laptop under their bed on the dirty floor, and most of all, a cellphone with a touchscreen that they are holding and staring at right on their hands whilst laying on their bed. Within this phone are mysterious, borderline anonymous people that they have oddly been casually talking to, delightfully exchanging dialogue about their favorite TV shows, films, games, etc. As this happens, what they are watching on a smaller window on the phone is some sort of Youtube video analyzing an old movie you remembered watching a long time ago but forgot the entire plot of. One user in their chatroom asks if they want to play an online video game together at a certain date and time and they reply back with an enthusiastic "yes". You're bewildered at how lively and genuine the bond between your child and these strangers are, perhaps more so than their bond with you.
Since over a decade at this point, your child tends to physically meet up with you in the house for an average total of 3 hours. The rest of that time is spent doing nothing but locking themselves in and wasting away at their electronics. At this point, no new hobby can alleviate their boredom as much as gazing at the media that plays on those mesmerizing blue-tinted screens and connecting with other like-minded folks from as far as overseas through such things. With all of this in mind, you ask within yourself "What kind of world are they, no, we living in?"
Sometimes out of nowhere, I get reminded of this one scene from Serial Experiments Lain that I remembered psychologically and emotionally breaking me the first time I watched it. Such prophetically addressed a very real dilemma that me and my generation have long struggled with comprehending: That our imperfect nuclear family is worth nothing compared to our perfect digital friends who for once shared the same temperament, interests (especially in media), humor, outlook on the world, etc. It is as if we migrated to a better place that efficiently suited our wants and needs, away from our mundane former residence that we found no meaning in living in judging from how little it gave us. It is as if we found paradise... Or so we thought.
