"What else can you play with but your phone?" said a father who handed over his left-behind children to a full-time care facility

After a month-long period of consideration, the father decided to hand over his younger brother to the town's trusteeship.

In the vast rural areas, there is a group of people who have been forced to lose the company of their parents because they have gone out to work, and are cared for by their grandparents or other relatives, they are called left-behind children. My brother is one of them.

Before he was sent to trusteeship, he was already living in town for a semester in the fifth grade. He lives at the school five days a week and goes home every weekend. But even though my brother is only at home two days a week, my grandparents still feel a lot of headaches. I used to be a left-behind child, and at that time, the Internet was not developed, and I was relatively well-behaved, so I grew up in such an extensive way. The younger brother's generation is facing the "flood beast" of the Internet in the new era, and the temptations on these networks are like thousands of wisps of vines, stretching out long tentacles, tightly wrapping around these lonely and weak children, sucking up the energy on their bodies.

In the beginning, my grandparents needed to do farm work and could not take care of my younger brother all the time, so they worried about his safety, so they used their mobile phones as "electronic nannies" so that my younger brother could stay at home safely all day. But how did they know that the younger brother fell into it as soon as he got on his mobile phone. Later, as soon as the younger brother came home, he would habitually ask his grandfather for a mobile phone to play. Later, my grandmother realized that something was wrong and locked her phone. But grandpa didn't stand on the same front with her, one wanted to prohibit his younger brother from playing with his mobile phone, and the other wanted to secretly give him his mobile phone, and the two often quarreled.

Later, as long as he doesn't ask his younger brother to come down to eat or call him to sleep, he can not eat, drink or sleep. If he didn't give him his phone, he would rummage through the cabinets, desperate to tear down the house, and dig three feet into the ground to find the phone. Once his phone was confiscated, he cried and even ran away from home. Sometimes my grandmother heard my brother swearing at her phone in the middle of the night. He became unwilling to do anything, unable to do anything. Even brushing your teeth and washing your face is like going through the motions, either you don't even squeeze the toothpaste, or you don't even get water on the towel. In the long run, my younger brother lost energy, not only did his grades decline, but he also lost his ability to take care of himself.

My parents are far away from home and can only communicate by phone. The grandparents are unable to discipline from generation to generation, and the parents are too far away, so "unwillingness" and "inability to manage" often breed contradictions. Parents often make grandparents beat and scold, and it is difficult for grandparents to enforce it.

During the holidays, I wanted to help him quit his phone, but once he left the phone, he would be restless and even lose his temper and swear at us. The vacation was very short, and before I could get him to quit his Internet addiction, he was going to work outside, and I had a deep sense of powerlessness when I left. I once asked my brother curiously, "Why do you like to play with your phone so much?"

With an indifferent face and empty eyes, he stared at the screen in front of him that lit up the game screen, and muttered, "What else can you play besides playing with your mobile phone? ”

Every time I go home, I can see a row of children squatting outside the kiosk rubbing the net. The cultural life in the countryside is indeed monotonous, and when children in the city go to learn their specialties, travel, and learn about this rich world, they can only learn about the outside world through their mobile phones. When they need care, their parents are not around. When they are defeated, they instinctively choose to run away and flee into the virtual world.

My cousin had excellent grades in the first year of junior high school, so his aunt bought him a smartphone to make it easy to contact, and then his grades plummeted, and now he can only work outside. There are many examples of indulging in playing with mobile phones and delaying schooling. According to a report released by the research team of Associate Professor Xia Zhuzhi of the China Rural Governance Research Center of Wuhan University, in the central provinces surveyed, ninety percent of left-behind children use exclusive mobile phones or elders' mobile phones to play, of which nearly seventy percent of children use mobile phones to watch short videos, and one-third use mobile games to play. Their mobile phones have become their toys and friends, as well as their dilemmas.

People in the village gradually realized the importance of education, some quit their jobs outside the home and returned home to take care of their children, some sent their children to the full nursery class of the county's private school, where they ate and lived in the school for the whole semester, and the town's childcare institutions also came into being, which were specially designed to take care of the children of migrant workers. It was not practical to stay at home to take care of my younger brother, and it was not safe to send him to the county seat, so my father considered it and sent my younger brother to this kind of custodian institution.

He helped his younger brother run a full nursery, paying 2,500 yuan a month, the child eats and lives there every day, and does not go home on weekends, and the teacher of the institution will be responsible for the daily pick-up and drop-off from school, and help with homework at night. Although it costs tens of thousands of dollars a semester, for the father, as long as the younger brother cannot access the mobile phone and can study hard, it is acceptable to have more money. There are many such institutions in the town, and they are all tailor-made for left-behind children. There are more than a dozen children about his age in the institution where his brother works, and their parents have to send them in to work outside the home. This institution is close to home, and grandparents can go to see their younger brother when they are free, and they can rest assured.

The problem in front of me seems to have been solved for a short time, but for some reason, I always have a sense of uncertainty, "Is the problem really solved?"

The younger brother stayed in the custodian institution for more than a month, and it was not until the Qingming Festival holiday that his grandparents took him back. Under the strict control of the teachers in the institution, his habits have indeed changed a lot. At least he will take the initiative to brush his teeth and wash his face, and his dependence on mobile phones is not so serious. When he asked his grandfather to get his mobile phone, his grandmother said, "If you play with your mobile phone, we won't pick you up next time." He immediately fell silent and stopped making the request. He looked more like he wanted to go home than his phone.

Behind the problem of left-behind children is a huge gap between urban and rural areas. Children trapped in the mountains are becoming distant from their parents in the city, and they are also out of step with the world. Without their parents, how can they grow up to be a "normal person"?

(The author is a citizen of Nanchang, Jiangxi)

• (We look forward to your contributions in the "hi, Southern Weekly" section of the Southern Weekly App.) Submission email: [email protected])

Leng Ling

Editor-in-charge: Wen Cuiling