Digital native versus digital naive

Our dad blogger Andreas B. comes into the world. Or rather, to the world of mobile phones, when he wants to confiscate his daughter's mobile phone ...

House arrest was the ultimate punishment in my day. I had to stay in my room, pissed off, isolated from the outside world and in the knowledge that my mates were playing football and having fun at that moment.
Today, the maximum punishment is called a «mobile phone ban». It's the modern form of house arrest, because social contacts, which are largely conducted via mobile phones, are gone in one fell swoop. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no WhatsApp, in short, no contact with the world and therefore the apocalypse for a young person.
I like to use the mobile phone ban with my daughters as I consider it to be an educational and effective measure that really punishes them.
I have the impression that many young people are far superior to us adults when it comes to mobile phones. They grow up with them, so to speak. They like to call them «digital natives», whereas «digitally naive» would apply more to me.

Mobile phone ban? No way!

My daughter Anaïs recently made very clever use of this technical advantage. When she once again failed to come home at the agreed time, I made the mistake of announcing the ban on her mobile phone via WhatsApp. As soon as she got home, I confiscated her mobile phone. I should have realised by then how unresistingly she handed me the device.
The sentence was two days of mobile phone confiscation, whereby the device was placed in a plastic safe specially designed for this purpose, which only opened again after the penalty had expired using a timer. Of course, only I had the key to this safe.
Anaïs soon retired to her room. When she was able to keep herself busy on the second day, I became suspicious. I opened the safe, took out the now de-energised mobile phone and used a pin to push out the SIM card holder.

Sim-salabim, the Sim card is not in there!

And yes, the little drawer was empty and the SIM card was gone. I almost had to smile a little. Anaïs had played me off my guard and turned me into a complete idiot with this clever move. To return to house arrest, this action is comparable to leaving through the window, then getting back in and not telling your parents.
At that moment, I realised that Anaïs could have easily inserted the SIM card into another mobile phone (wherever she got it from). And that's what happened ...
I don't normally enter a closed room. My decency forbids it. But this time it was different. I tiptoed to the door of her room, knocked hard and briefly once and quickly entered. Anaïs was lying on her stomach on the bed, looked at me with wide eyes and turned abruptly onto her side. I had just seen her hiding something under the duvet and you don't have to be a clairvoyant to know what it was. Anaïs' clever move meant that the mobile phone ban started all over again.
Then came trick number two. What I didn't know either (and had to learn from my younger daughter Olivia): An iPod Touch is also internet-enabled and you can easily exchange information via social media. As a result, Anaïs was still able to continue chatting without me finding out - despite being deprived of her mobile phone and SIM card.
The next step in «digital house arrest» was to also switch off the Wi-Fi. Then the iPod Touch also stopped working and finally there was peace and quiet. But logically, without wifi, Internet access with my laptop also stopped working. And so the mobile phone ban turned into an enforced «digital detox» - which was good for us all! The next mobile phone ban can come ...

To the author:

Andreas B. lives in the suburbs of a large German-speaking Swiss city, has been separated for four years and is a single parent. His teenage daughters and their friends actually have different names, but we want to prevent future employers from coming across these unvarnished adolescent experiences. For example, he has already reported on their secret joyrides.

Read more from the single dad:

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