The Question That Broke Me Open
- Gael MacLean
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Why your kid's iPad matters more than the next election
An Introduction to the Series: The Digital Infection
Why?
It's the question that wakes me at 3 AM. The one that turned my fascination with technology into horror. The one that transformed me from digital evangelist to digital dissident.
I need to tell you where I'm coming from, because credentials matter when you're about to claim that Silicon Valley is colonizing your children's minds. I was there at the beginning, you see. I spent years in the tech world, ran workshops teaching filmmakers how to bridge the abyss between celluloid and pixels, consulted for startups that promised to "change the world." I wasn't just a believer—I was an evangelist. When the internet was going to democratize everything. When social media would bring us together. When smartphones would make us smarter.
I thought we were building infinite worlds.
We were. We just didn't realize they'd be cages.
MySpace felt like a party. Facebook felt like connection. Twitter felt like democracy. For about five minutes. Then something shifted. The smell changed. From creation to extraction. From connection to addiction. From tools to traps.
But it was the smartphones that made me really start asking: Why?
Not just why are they designed to be addictive—that's obvious. Money. But why the specific targeting of children? Why the systematic destruction of attention spans? Why the deliberate fracturing of political discourse? Why build systems that make democracy impossible?
What's the endgame?
Because what's happening right now—the hate, the division, the inability to agree on basic reality—this isn't accident. It's architecture. Someone benefits from a population that can't think straight. Someone profits from children who can't focus. Someone wins when democracy fails.
Who?
And more importantly: Why?
These questions led me down a rabbit hole that goes deeper than Silicon Valley, darker than surveillance capitalism, and more urgent than any election. It led me to a truth so stark I had to verify it a dozen times before I believed it:
They're not trying to sell us products. They're turning us into products. And by "us," I mean our consciousness itself.
Your kids aren't using apps. Apps are using your kids. Not just their data or their attention—their actual neurological development. Their capacity for thought. Their ability to resist.
This isn't hyperbole. This is happening. Right now. In your home. Today, as you read this in late 2025, Meta is perfecting algorithms that can predict your teenager's emotional state better than you can. Google's educational platforms are building psychological profiles that will follow your six-year-old for life. And the same companies that created these systems are now racing to put AI directly into your children's daily experience.
The adults? We're probably lost. Our brains are already colonized, our synapses already sold. We scroll through our own subjugation, arguing about symptoms while the disease metastasizes. We're so busy fighting each other we can't see we're all in the same cage.
But the children—that's where the real crime is happening. That's where the future is being murdered. One dopamine hit at a time. One scroll at a time. One neural pathway at a time.
Is it too late to save them?
That question can't be answered in 1,500 words. It can't be answered with comfortable lies or moderate positions. It requires us to see clearly what's being done, who's doing it, and why. It requires us to understand the system in its totality—the political capture, the neurological colonization, the algorithmic cage being built around human consciousness.
And then it requires us to act. Not tomorrow. Not after the next election. Now.
This three-part series is my attempt to answer the question that broke me open. To show you what I've seen. To map the machine that's eating our children's minds. And to provide a roadmap for resistance—not because I'm certain it will work, but because the alternative is unconscionable.
Part I: The Infection
...shows what's happening inside your child's brain when they stare at that screen. The literal, chemical, neurological colonization. The addiction by design. The deliberate destruction of human potential. Once you see the infection, you can't unsee it. The symptoms suddenly make sense—the rage, the anxiety, the inability to focus. It's not a bug. It's the virus doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Part II: The Fever Dream
...connects the dots you're not supposed to connect. From Silicon Valley to Moscow. From your kid's classroom to China's surveillance state. From educational apps to authoritarian AI. The architecture of a system designed to create not just profit, but permanent control. The fever dream feels normal while you're in it. That's how you know the infection has taken hold. The sickness becomes the baseline, the delirium becomes consensus reality.
Part III: The Antidote
...gives you the tools for resistance. Not comfortable solutions. Not easy answers. But practical, actionable steps to raise free children in a digital prison. To build parallel systems. To create what might be the last generation of humans with uncolonized minds. The antidote isn't painless. Recovery never is. But on the other side of withdrawal is something we'd almost forgotten: clarity.
Fair warning: This journey leads to uncomfortable places. To responsibilities you might not want. To choices between comfort and conscience. To the realization that your kid's iPad isn't just bad for them—it's the infrastructure of a new form of totalitarianism that makes previous dictatorships look quaint.
Yes, I know how that sounds. I know the resistance you're feeling right now—the same resistance I felt when I first started connecting these dots. "That's too extreme. That's conspiracy thinking. That can't be real." I get it. I spent months fact-checking myself, looking for the flaw in my logic, the place where I'd gone too far.
I couldn't find it.
But here's what I did find: hope. Real hope. Based not on wishful thinking but on understanding that every system of control contains the seeds of its own resistance. That human consciousness, for all its vulnerability, has survived every attempt to cage it. That parents armed with knowledge and courage have toppled empires before.
I found families who've successfully opted out. Communities building alternatives. Kids who've broken free and recovered their attention, their creativity, their capacity for joy. It's possible. It's happening. Just not at scale—yet.
The question isn't whether we can save our children.
The question is whether we're willing to pay the price.
The machine is counting on our exhaustion, our isolation, our addiction to the very systems that enslave us. It's counting on us choosing the easy path, the comfortable lie, the iPad babysitter.
It's probably right.
But what if it's not?
What if enough parents simultaneously wake up to what's being done to their children and decide to resist? What if we actually choose our kids' consciousness over our own convenience? What if we plant the seeds of tomorrow's resistance in today's playgrounds?
That's the bet I'm making with this series. That somewhere out there are parents who sense something is deeply wrong but can't quite name it. Who watch their kids disappear into screens and feel a primal alarm they've been taught to ignore. Who are ready to see clearly, no matter how uncomfortable the view.
If that's you, welcome to the resistance.
It starts with a question: Why?
It ends with your child's freedom.
Or it ends with nothing human left to save.
Your move.
Coming soon: Part I: The Infection – Your Phone Is a Prison and Your Kids Are the Experiment
A Note on Sources and Support: This series draws from peer-reviewed neuroscience research, testimony from tech industry insiders, and the lived experiences of families navigating digital addiction. If you or your child are struggling with severe technology dependency, please consider reaching out to a mental health professional who specializes in behavioral addiction. Resources and references are provided at the end of Part III.
Image ©2025 Gael MacLean