I was glued to my PC in the nineties, while my folks read, played crossword, and talked to family on the phone. I guess we all get consumed by something which i

I was glued to my PC in the nineties, while my folks read, played crossword, and talked to family on the phone. I guess we all get consumed by something which interests us. I'm lucky to have had a very balanced life. I had the geeky friends at school, and a whole mixture of friends via church. My dad was very sporty, so that rubbed off a bit on me: I participated in everything school had to offer (rugby, cricket, athletics); never any good, mind you, but there was always a C or D team that would me. My folks love caravan holidays, so we were away with the caravan club every second weekend, and the cherry on top were those 6+ weeks summer holidays by the riverside. We made plenty of friends this way, and had a variety of activities to occupy us (fishing, swimming, games, and the lone Double Dragon arcade machine in the canteen). But, when back home, I was very happy to switch on the old 486DX4 and tinker with Slackware and code Pascal or dual boot into DOS/Windows3.11 and tweak bat files so I can play Lemmings or something. Perhaps it boils down to offering our own kids as many opportunities as possible. Not forcing it on them, but participating with them and showing a genuine interest. E.g. we've turned our 5 and 9 year olds into avid hikers by not forcing the walking on them, but by calling it "treasure hunting" and incorporating geo-caching into the walking. (Their friends, when coming along, ask me to carry them after a while, haha). When we go camping, we pick car-free campsites where they can roam free, and we can trust them because we've done all the tricky stuff with them a few times before. Those are their favourite holidays. That said, being glued to a computer today is a whole different ball game, what with the various algorithms that keep folks engaged on social media and possibly in games. I don't know if I have an answer for this. (For our little ones, their tablets are managed by Google Family link, so no Youtube, and websites on Chrome and Play Store installs are approve-only.)