That doesn’t mean I’m sanguine: vloggers horrify me. I bulldoze around, going “this person isn’t saying anything”

This is my concern about “screen time.”

I was a neglected child of the 90s. I grew up with television as my babysitter. Every day after school, I subsisted on a diet of Duck Tales, Ninja Turtles, and Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers. Plus about three dozen other cartoons I could name.

I spent the week looking forward to ABC’s TGIF Friday evenings, a two-hour block of Full House, Boy Meets World, Family Matters, and Step by Step.

I liked the older stuff, too. TV Land had all the classics. The Addams Family was a favorite, but I also enjoyed The Munsters, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, I Love Lucy, Bewitched, Mr. Ed…

The point is, I watched a ton of television as a kid.

But there’s a huge difference between all of these shows and watching some dumb kid play Fortnite on Youtube.

The stuff I watched as a kid was fiction. It had a narrative. There were lessons and morals wrapped up in each storyline. Stories that taught you about friendship and empathy and being kind.

As a writer, I greatly believe in the value of fiction. It enriches our lives, and it teaches us things, about what it means to be human, and how to be better humans.

None of these Youtube vlogs have anything of the sort. It’s just… noise.