It’s all my fault. Or at least, that’s how it feels most days. The good things pass quietly, barely noticed, but every mistake, every shortcoming, every answer that wasn’t good enough gets catalogued like evidence in some lifelong case against me. Fair enough. I’m hardly the only single parent carrying this kind of weight. Every parent is dealing with some version of this. I’ve just chosen to write mine down.

We all live with the consequences of our actions, even if it often seems like the higher up the ladder you climb, the less those consequences ever seem to land. Down here on ground level, though, they land heavy. Long story short: my daughter is addicted to the screen, and my attempts to deal with it have been, at least in my totally-not-mentally-ill opinion, consistently undermined by my ex-wife, then resisted with full dramatic force by my daughter herself. It has been nothing short of theatre.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as “screen time” because there was barely any screen to regulate. We had a television with a handful of channels, a radio, and a rotary phone. Entertainment was slower, more communal, and more limited. Apart from the telephone, most of it happened together. Until the VCR showed up, you had to be present when your show was on. Nothing was on demand. You adapted your life to the world, not the other way around.

That whole era got lynched by the algorithm and shareholder greed. We live in peak individualism now, where every app is designed to isolate, monetize, and hold attention hostage. Learning how to parent inside that reality has not exactly been one of my strengths because, fundamentally, I am a homebody with a soft spot and a daughter whose whining can wear down concrete.

It started innocently enough. YouTube Kids together after dinner. Disney Channel while I cooked. The smart TV felt like progress. For a little while, that new-school era of screen-time togetherness felt wholesome. It was shared. It was manageable. It felt like parenting, not outsourcing.

But convenience is undefeated. Life gets busy. The move to Nigeria. Airports, long-haul flights, jet lag, errands, logistics… the screen became the perfect solution for every little “just this once” situation. It helped during the chaos, and slowly, almost invisibly, it became part of everything. By five or six years old, the habit was already rooted.

And yes, I know, I gummed it up. But in my defence, the separation from my wife was messy, and that made every boundary harder to hold. When I moved back to Canada, she gave my daughter a phone and demanded I get her a number so they could stay in touch without my “interference.” So, to prove I wasn’t the villain in her narrative, I got the SIM.

Then the ex sent the iPad for Christmas. She was number one with my daughter once again. Then came the iMac for “writing essays.” Ex back in the “lead” of the game I was never playing. So, it was screens everywhere, without my blessing. And when it came time to say enough… to shut it off, to enforce a break… I was the bad guy.

Not just the bad guy either. The villain. The recipient of the tears, the accusations, the sharp little words that stick longer than they should, and lately, the more physical expressions of that frustration that are harder to absorb pain-free. I knew the screen time was too high. I knew it for a long time. But I’m a pushover. I give in too easily. I told myself she would grow out of it, she’d adapt, she’d learn to cope, but often I’m just being weak.

Back when it was only YouTube Kids and a few harmless games stuffed with ads, it all felt less dangerous. App Store purchases and downloads were locked down, the obvious traps seemed covered. But in hindsight, YouTube and Roblox were more than enough. That was the soil where all the later problems got planted.

Now she’s older, and the battlefield has shifted. Her friends at school already have Snapchat, TikTok, and every other social app they are too young to be using, so now the pressure is external too. It’s no longer just boredom or habit; it’s status, belonging, social survival. And my refusal to cave on that front has made me public enemy number one in my own house.

The socials have always been my red line. That was easy when she didn’t care what happened after school ended. Now it’s different. Now the pressure is real, and so is the resentment. Her hatred of my policies has reached levels I honestly didn’t think possible. But lately, her behaviour has made it clear: I should have done this years ago.

So now I’m doing what I should have done from the beginning. I’m reining it in. Properly. Device simplification. Harder boundaries. Because the longer I wait, the worse it gets. To any parent trying to do the same: Godspeed.

There is no clean victory lap here. The routines, the dependency, the anger… all of it built up slowly, and none of it comes with a silver lining. I know full well it is going to get worse before it gets better. But choosing the harder short-term pain will mean she has a better long-term chance. At least that’s the hope!

I’m also strangely encouraged that governments are finally starting to acknowledge this problem as more than just individual parental failure. I support Bill C-216, which would set age limits for social media and AI chatbots for youth in Canada. Because this cannot just be every exhausted parent fighting trillion-dollar attention machines alone.

As one advocate put it: consider road safety. We engineer safer vehicles, establish age minimums, create regulators, and require driver education. Digital safety deserves the same seriousness: age guardrails, platform accountability, and digital literacy. That part, at least, feels like common sense.

Maybe I should have been stronger at the beginning. No, scratch that. I should have been stronger. Full stop. But regret is cheap. So here we are. Day one. Again.