Thank you to Stephen Hussey for his Feb. 24 My Turn decrying “Tech fundamentalism,” the false belief that we need to and have to fully embrace every technological “innovation” — AI included — that comes along.

In the 80s and 90s, when we were raising our first two kids, we had no TV in the home. (One neighbor actually believed this was a form of child abuse.) Far from being stunted, our children learned to read books for escape, fun, and information; to listen to radio and tapes, which gave them highly developed auditory skills; and to spend a lot of time outdoors, looking for something to do. They ended up nature lovers, readers, and athletes.

And when my third child was growing up in the 2000s, at the point that computers had become a common workplace and life tool, we had only one computer in the house basically a word processor and a weak internet connection — and it was in a hallway where everyone passed by and could see anything a person (adult or child) was doing on it, not in a bedroom behind a closed door.

None of my three children had cellphones until they were adults and bought their own.
My husband and I still don’t have them.

Are there occasional inconveniences? Sure. My children’s teachers and coaches might tell you a few eye-rolling stories about times when a practice got canceled and a kid was stranded at school for a few hours with no ride home. Or our kids would protest that absolutely everybody had seen some great movie they hadn’t, in which case we’d eventually get the DVD from the library. Or they would maybe spend a little too much time at a friend’s house making up for their TV-deprivation. Or someone might complain that they couldn’t reach my husband when he was on the tractor. (Which was fine with him.)

But nobody died for want of technology. Everyone’s healthy, smart, and got good grades in school. They have friends. They go places and do things. Not surprisingly, they also are raising their children with minimal media exposure. My guess is their kids are unlikely to have a cellphone till they have an actual need for it, and it will probably be when they’re old enough to show good judgment in using it.

Something that is surprising, though, is that I find my grandchildren are not alone. Many of the next generation of young parents are getting it. They can see when they — and worse, their children — are being manipulated, and they’re saying, no thank you.

I write this not to pat any of us on the back, but to demonstrate to anyone who may have felt Stephen Hussey’s article was totally unrealistic that resisting or even refusing some tech “advancements” is perfectly possible, perfectly normal, perfectly doable, especially if you start early. We don’t need to let the Tech Bros and FOMOs (the Fear of Missing Out folks) convince us that we have to try everything. adopt everything, upgrade everything, consume everything. We know what it takes to raise a child. Love and attention and listening and teaching and guidance and support. From humans.

Patricia Crosby lives in Gill.