Adult Pacifiers · 21 June 2025
I doubt that I am the first to think about it, but phones seem to be adult (and teen) pacifiers.
We did not give our children pacifiers when they were young. I am not exactly sure why, but it was something we were firmly against. Part of it was probably because we did not grow up with them. At least not too much. Every baby did not have them when I was a baby. Or at least that is what I tell myself. I do remember seeing kids (including my younger siblings) holding bottles with their hands and feet and sucking them dry. And even beyond dry. They kept sucking on the bottle until long after there was no more formula. Maybe that was where the idea for pacifiers came from in the first place. Hmm.
At any rate.
Fast forward fifty years and I see pacifiers all around me. But I am not around infants. I see teens and adults walking around with their eyes glued to their phones. They do not even look where they are going. They just keep staring at their phones. They might be bored. They might be tired. They might just be living life. But they are glued to their phones. Just like babies sucking on their pacifiers.
Which is an interesting word. Pacifiers. We give those pacifiers to toddlers because we want to pacify them. We do not want them crying when they are supposed to be quiet. But if they are hungry, they will just spit those things out and cry until they get the food they want. Or at least that is the theory. I think. I am not sure since we did not use them on our kids. We fed them when they needed to be fed and we let them play video games when they were bored.
Maybe you had to read that last line twice. Yes. I made a poor parenting decision. I let our toddlers play video games when they were bored.
I must confess that I am guilty of giving a hand-held video game to my two-year old son. I said it was his, and it was when he had it, but I am the one who wanted to play Pokémon. Sure, I was playing it with his older brother (who was seven, by the way), but I still gave him, the toddler, the electronic pacifier.
At any rate.
I have this strange picture in my mind of teens and adults walking around with pacifiers in their mouths. It is odd, but it is probably fitting. After all, is that not what we are doing when we walk around with our phones and ignore the world around us? Are we not pacifying ourselves? Giving ourselves soothing stimulation when we are tired, hungry, bored? It makes you think. Or at least it makes me think.
I am not sure that anybody thinks of phones as adult and teen pacifiers, but it might be an apt metaphor. For like the pacifiers that we use for babies and toddlers, adult pacifiers are there to take our minds off the things that we really want to think about. For whether they are for babies or teens or adults, all pacifiers just keep us occupied. Just keep us pacified.
© 2025 Michael T. Miyoshi
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