There were no donut-catching unicorns, although I was free to challenge my wits by attempting to untangle the spiral cable that linked the phone to the handset. When I was their age, non-face-to-face, real-time interactions with friends would take place over the phone in the downstairs hallway at home, where everyone could hear what I was saying and where I could talk for no longer than 10 minutes before an agitated parent started muttering about phone bills and 'blocking the line'. None of this technology existed a generation ago. Both kids grew noticeably shy during lockdown, but their nervousness about speaking to friends they hadn't seen for a while was cured by using video-calling platforms with built-in games: after a few minutes of wordless, giggling competition in which they became unicorns and caught donuts on their virtual nose-horns, they had loosened up to discuss serious matters like Pokémon and Mario Kart.

My son, who is yet to reach the developmental milestone of smartphone ownership, chatted with his classmates via Google Classroom.

My daughter and her friends played a game on their phones while discussing their strategy in a WhatsApp group. If the lockdown had happened a couple of decades earlier, any contact with people we didn't live with would have taken place via phone calls, email or letter-writing.īut in the 2020s, things are different.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, I watched how my children responded to the fact that they couldn't see their friends in person.

Pokemon go friends reddit trying world