I met my nine years old cousin a couple of days ago at a very fancy café in Lahore where she expressed her horrific intention: "I want to commit suicide!"

"Why, Mano? What happened?" I was shell shocked.

"My mom refused to buy me an android phone," she replied, much to my chagrin. "Why did she do that? She herself is using it all the time!"

Those couple of minutes of our conversation sent me back to the days when I and my elder brother would spend hours exploring the new areas in town -- the days when we did not find, or rather did not care about any circumstances and we, with all our youthful energy, wanted to search every possible thing about our surroundings.

Despite some resistance from our parents, we would go cycling or running and enjoy our childhood to the fullest because we had realised from their excited facial expressions that our parents always wanted to give us due freedom with enough safety measures and devote enough of their time in listening to our made-up and sometimes true stories.

When I came back to my little cousin’s cries, I realised I had spent the past fifteen minutes in reflecting on several such incidents from my life. Finally, I made an effort to understand the reason behind my little cousin’s worries. I found out that parents, kids’ favourite teachers, older siblings and everyone who made a huge difference in juvenile decision-making process and lives are so busy with their mobile phones or laptops/iPads that the idea of human interaction, person-to-person meetings, discussions and even play is on its way to vanish completely.

Given that fact, it’s already destroyed for the kids.

The human intelligence gave us such efficient ways to ease our myriad of problems but we are forgetting that human intelligence is after all different from ‘artificial intelligence.’ Juveniles depend on us, our attention, so that they can develop properly and be able to create an impact in the world they inhabit. We need to make their existence worth it. Instead, we are creating circumstances where we are turning our kids into slaves of these artificial gadgets.

These priorities need our urgent attention. Juveniles are the most sensitive part of our society who can become anything that we let them. Why would parents’ misuse of gadgets (no matter how brilliant excuse they come up with) is destructive for their kids who deserve time with them and not the androids. The days when the kids would read books with colourful pictures or ask their guardians/parents to chant them bed-time stories are over.

Incidentally, it was these stories that helped us, in our childhood, to distinguish between good and bad, empathy and sympathy, truth and lie.

These days, the kids don’t ride bicycles with their peers or elders. Instead, they have accounts made on social networking sites and the parents wouldn’t even know or bother to know what’s going on. Not even for the sake of their children’s safety.

I consider it a serious oversight on the part of the authorities that, in the name of safety, isolates their kids to explore the world. Why don’t the authorities and parents collectively start giving time to the kids and help them learn and develop?

A culture of convenience shall bring nothing but a destructive transformation of human kind into a slave. We should start learning how to use gadgets until they start using us.

Today, we have millions of examples where the kids are actually committing suicides or killing their own parents or relatives just to have what they want. In case of consisting parenting styles and the healthy atmosphere of sharing thoughts on every matter of life, the parents should not pursue a weak tool of handing over the gadgets to the juveniles because this will keep the latter occupied.