Mom shoots, sledgehammers kids' iPhone, blaming social media
Technically Incorrect: A YouTube video shows a Southern mom so annoyed with her kids' use of social media that she takes it out on their iPhone.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
She's not happy. And she's thinking different.
Parents sometimes struggle with their kids' proclivities.
It's always been this way. However, technology has made it more pronounced and more immediate.
Perhaps that's why a Southern mom decided to take draconian action in order to discipline her kids' allegedly wastrel ways.
In a video posted by the Daily Mail and emerging on YouTube, an imposing mom imposes herself on her kids' iPhone.
She places it on a tree stump, takes up a shotgun and blasts it.
"I hereby denounce the effects that social media have on my children," she declares. "Their disobedience and their disrespect."
A powerful sentiment, to be sure.
What some might find more powerful is that she's not content with just shooting the iPhone once. She shoots it twice.
Then, as her three children stand by, aghast that their lifeline to the world is being destroyed, mom has (what's left of) the iPhone put back onto the tree stump. She then takes a sledgehammer and smashes it upon these remains.
"My children's lives are more important to me than any electronic on this earth," she declaims.
The kids aren't entirely moved. "Good for you," one says. "We don't give two f***s." Oh, surely they give at least one.
The mom is unimpressed by their unimpressedness.
"I refuse to be cursed. I refuse to be disobeyed. I take back my role as your parent."
Well, I suppose this is one way of doing it.
She bemoans her kids "contacting people they don't know, being involved in drama they don't need to be in, and being in trouble at school for having phones out."
The shame. Oh, the shame.
Of course, there's no knowing how real this video is or, if it is real, what all the circumstances surrounding it were. It isn't, though, the first time a parent has taken explosive steps to destroy a gadget.
Who can forget the southern dad who shot up his daughter's laptop? Her alleged transgression? She'd spoken ill of her parents on Facebook.
Yes, on Facebook.
Parents may try, but it's a lost cause. Gadgets and social media are the repositories of modern human life. It might seem strange and even insane, but you cannot stop it.
You might as well sit back, grab a glass of wine, read your kids' social media feeds and chuckle: "Was I ever this self-absorbed once? Oh, maybe."