How to Gift Your Parents An Electronic Device

’Tis the Season to Break the Remote

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

By Ginny Hogan and Alex Connolly

The holidays are a great time to introduce your parents to new technologies, which you can then use when you’re visiting. Unfamiliar electronics may be met with resistance by the older generations, however. That’s why we’ve put together a step-by-step guide for jamming high-tech gifts down their throats:

1. Reflect on your parents’ relationship with new technology. Do they dislike it because it erodes self reliance, or do they dislike it because it disrupts cherished routines? Knowing exactly how your gift will upset them will show that you really thought it through.
2. Identify an aspect of your parents’ daily lives that is perfectly fine as it is. Now, think about how to complicate it with some 5G piece of crap that they neither need nor want nor will learn how to use. Ideally something that requires an app to even turn on.
3. When wrapping the gift, disguise it as something that they’d actually like. For example, you can wrap an Alexa in a onesie so they think it’s a grandchild. This will bring them fleeting joy. And isn’t all joy fleeting, after all?
4. When they unwrap the real gift, explain what it is. Then explain it again. Explain it several more times, analogizing to the last new technology they adopted, nine years ago (unfortunately, it was Facebook).
5. Assure them that the device will not secretly record their conversations, even though it will.
6. Emphasize the inferiority of whatever your gift is replacing. For example, their dumb dog Rufus can’t even fetch, whereas a robotic Smart Dog can bring them targeted ads every morning.
7. As you go back and forth, your parents will become increasingly irate, so slip some crushed Valium into their coffees.
8. Put some in your own coffee, too, because at this point, you’ll be having second thoughts. Thoughts like: “Is this gift a backdoor way to control my parents’ lifestyle and validate my own? Shouldn’t gift-giving be about making them feel seen and loved?”
9. Announce, “Guys, this might be the Valium talking, but I just want to say that I see and love you.”
10. When they freak out — over a little Valium! — resist the urge to say “OK, boomer!” It would only make things worse, and, also, saying that might not be cool anymore.
11. Explain that you’re totally fine. Yes, you’ve had insomnia every night for the past six years, but so have all your friends. That’s just an unfortunate but unavoidable part of modern life, like Twitter.
12. When they say they still think you should get off Valium, ask if they’d be able to sleep while holding a blue light three inches from their face. Sleeping was easy in their day. Most of the TV channels were white noise.
13. If they ask why you can’t turn your phone off at night, tell them there’s no need to get sarcastic.
14. You’ll start to feel attacked, so call an Uber to the nearest Apple store — the last place you felt safe.
15. When your mother grabs you by the shoulders, catch a glimpse of yourself through her concerned, loving eyes. See what you’ve become. Weep.
16. Agree that you need to see a therapist. Also agree that they should probably pay for it. Your OLED TV left you deep in debt.
17. Tell the therapist everything: that you check an app to remind you which apps to check; that sometimes you make your phone find itself, just for the notifications; that you’ve lined all the surfaces of your home with wireless chargers and you’re worried you have too many electrons now.
18. Start to unplug. Leave your phone in a different room while you watch TV. Put your fridge on airplane mode for a few hours.
19. Let yourself grieve — and heal.
20. Apologize to your parents for trying to force your electronics addiction on them. Promise you’ll never get them another gift ever again.
21. Understand that it’s not just electronics you can let go of, but the whole idea that life is something to be constantly upgraded. Consumer possessions won’t make you feel okay. That feeling has to come from inside, through patience, and pain, and…
22. Realize that — wait! — it can also come from succulents! Buy them! Buy them all!

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