I don’t care about your children

I’m sorry if this news upsets you, but it’s the simple truth. I don’t care what they eat, where they sleep, or what they used to write their name on your wall. I don’t want to know what their teachers say about them or get regular updates on the tedious expansion of their limited lexicon. I have tolerated it so far, but it’s now gotten to the point that scrolling past one kiddie newsflash only results in being subjected to a second or a third. It’s so bad, I am starting to consider abandoning all social media.

That would be a shame as social media is demonstratively a sign of human progression. Despite arguments to the contrary, I believe that any medium which alerts me to a really interesting article on how Earth Hour is a waste of time while I sit on the toilet is a real advancement of humanity. I am of the exact same opinion when I find a video of a cat pushing another cat down some stairs at the top of my Facebook news feed. It made me laugh, and previous to YouTube, I would have had to sit through the whole of America’s Funniest Home Videos just to see that one funny clip. Social media is also very worthy in that it allows people to raise awareness of charity fundraisers and other good causes. But moreover, I adore the fact that I can have long drawn-out conversations with old school friends on obscure Chinese movies. And it’s even better that I can do these things while getting on with the rest of my life. Social media gives me the chance to be there without being there. I can wish happy returns, send commiserations, and congratulate my friends in seconds and I can do it from thousands of miles away. Of course, I find what Callie Schweitzer brilliantly terms as declarations of faux intimacy to be tedious and annoying, but for the most part I’m glad to have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Pinterest in my life. For me, they are part of what makes it better to live now rather than in the 90s, which I previously inhabited as a child.

However, there is one thing thing about the 90s that was much better, and that one thing is that parents were much more considerate towards other people back then. This etiquette between peers is something that does not require improvement. In the time before Facebook, when you were a child, your parent’s friends didn’t care about you, and I don’t care about your kids now. Think about it, did our parents spend the decade on the phone to each other gushing about little David’s first steps? Did they snail-mail each other pictures of their twins’ latest cute matching outfits? Did they run over to the neighbor’s house to tell them about how they think that they might have heard the word ‘Daddy’?
No, they did not.
So why do people think that it’s appropriate content for a Facebook timeline or Twitter feed? Babies and children are a special interest. You have to want one before you want to read about them, and judging by modern birth rates, wanting one puts you in the minority. In the past, people would join parent-child support groups and go to poorly-heated town halls to share their inane stories of diapers, hooping cough, and which department store has the best baby-change facilities. The really great thing about this was that the town halls would post a schedule on their noticeboards that allowed non-parents to know that they shouldn’t go anywhere near that particular community facility at that particular time. If you want to make use of the speed and immediacy of modern communication methods, post in a secret baby group, it’s one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg decided to give us ‘groups’. Why do you think celebrities try so hard to keep their kids out of the spotlight? It’s not to give them a chance of a normal life (if they really wanted that, they’d put them up for adoption), it is because they know that if they drone on about how much they love their children, people would stop listening to whatever they said. Look at Obama, he tells the cute story about getting them a puppy, and then never mentions the daughters again until he needs them for an election rally.

If you’re unfortunate enough to follow me on Twitter or have your news feed filled up with my own status updates, you might well have a similar objection to posts I make on various sporting events. They are just as regular and probably almost as intrusive as your daily kiddie news flashes. My response is this, sport makes it onto the news, there’s a reason your child’s first day at school is not going to be on CNN, no one gives a flying donkey’s left testicle, thats why. There are people who genuinely care about the Champion’s League, only your mom cares about how cute little Daisy looks in the appalling scarf you “knitted” for her. Think back to all the movies you’ve ever seen, are there any memorable scenes where the protagonist whips out his baby pictures to show them off to his best friend? No. OK, so you might have heard the occasional, “How are the kids?” But that was just a line to make the main character seem a little more human. Mercifully, the director would spare us the details. It’s this desire to be spared the details that has given birth to inventions like unbaby.me. This beautiful little add-on for Google Chrome replaces baby updates with pictures of “awesome stuff.”Now, instead of a lengthy home video of your child’s inability to walk properly, I’ll be treated to a picture of freshly cooked bacon or a slightly cross-eyed cat. On second thoughts, maybe I won’t give up social media after all.