Warning

A couple of weeks ago, my husband put one of those extra sturdy metal dividers in my Jeep. I think it says, “Kennel Guard” on the bottom, a double-layer grid that in my rearview mirror, really looks like a cage. It’s made to keep one of those big, unruly dogs in the back seat to keep you safe while you’re driving. 

Except, I don’t have a dog.

What I do have is an angry, autistic sixteen-year-old who is so addicted to YouTube that having it has made him as violent as not having it. Before we got to the point we are now, deep in the throes of what can only be called withdrawal, he was only allowed YouTube when he earned it as a reward, three times a day, five minutes at a time, at the exact same times every day—after completing his morning routine, after successfully sitting at the table for dinner, and after bath. It had been that way for about a decade. There have been times when we have slipped, of course—doctors’ appointments, hours-long infusions for his medical conditions, important phone calls when I needed him to be distracted, IEP meetings. Certainly, there also have been times when well-intentioned family members used YouTube to pacify him, when support staff used it to show him something (actually, they are the ones who introduced him to it. So excited to find a motivator!), teachers used it instead of teaching…I could go on, but the point is, I have tried to be careful with it because I have always known it was as detrimental as it was helpful. The way he acted after stimming off of it lead to the intense restrictions in the first place. Can you imagine a five-year-old hopped up on sugar? How about cocaine? 

I will never forget a miniature version of him sitting on the toilet, screaming, “Ipad!” while yanking my hair so hard I screamed for help. No one came. I angrily yanked the iPad from Thomas’s chubby hands and slammed it in a drawer. “All done. No more YouTube! Ever!” I won’t deny how satisfying that particular combination of words felt leaving my mouth. In the coming weeks, I filled his time with other things he liked: playing outside on the swing or trampoline, drawing logos, going to the store to browse the toy section, listening to music, watching cartoons, reading stories. The kindergarten teachers could not believe the improvement they saw within days. After about two weeks, he was a different kid. At that time, Thomas was in a mainstream classroom. He was struggling, but he was making progress. The fact that I remember not using YouTube as difficult, but that I cannot relay a single story about anything that be called withdrawal tells me it wasn’t all that hard. 

Two years later, desperate to motivate him to use the toilet, to sit for meals, to try new foods, to take a handful of pills every day, to ride in the car without aggression, to leave his shoes on in the car, to stop pulling hair, to wait, to have nice hands, to practice his spelling words, to read, to do any of the thousand demands we placed on him every single day, YouTube somehow returned. It’s not that it snuck back in, rather, he must have been having trouble with a particular skill. I don’t remember which, ironically, but I do remember wrestling with the decision of whether to allow him to work for YouTube as a reward. I asked our Behavior Consultant if something could be too motivating. She said no. Theoretically. What she forgot to mention is that it can be addicting.

I am not blaming anyone. If there is any fault, it is mine. I saw the signs. I read books and studies. I knew better. And I did it anyway. Throughout the next ten years, there were times when I wanted to cut it out of his life entirely, but I could always justify using it. The truth was that quitting was going to be too hard. I freely admitted that. Here it is day seven of detox, and I can tell you, I had no idea what hard was. The little boy whose fingers I so easily pried the rubber-encased iPadfrom is long gone. Autism, OCD, catatonia, and severe autoimmune encephalitis have swallowed him whole. And YouTube was right there, streaming trippy logo videos through it all. I now have a two-hundred-pound teenager who sits behind a dog kennel to ride in the car. Without that barrier, I would be dead. The last time he had me by the hair on the PA turnpike, I was nearly rear-ended by a semi between emergency pull-off areas. 

Thomas had gotten to the point where every time he finished using YouTube, he was a different person, glazed over, angry, anxious, and tweaking like a crack whore. I honestly can’t tell you if he wanted more or less than his five-minute allotment. If you’ve ever tried intermittent fasting, and have an addictive personality, you quickly realize that it becomes intermittent eating. The space between meals is just time you bide until you can eat again. I think this is what happened with Thomas and YouTube. Life was only blocks of time that were not YouTube time. Another one would come; it always did. If he just sat on the couch, rocked back and forth and waited, it would be time again soon. Eventually, that’s all he did and all he cared about.Nothing in the real world could compare to the way he felt watching logos fly across the screen, twist and turn, play backwards to the beat of techno music, blare in robot voices, flashing, blipping, beeping, screaming, fast and loud. There was one on a channel called Potato that could send him into a jumping, shrieking rage within 3 seconds. He appeared tortured and angst-ridden, but boy was he mad if I made him turn it off. Like the whole reward system we had set up, I didn’t know which was worse. 

On the morning of Day 6 of detox, he bounced my head off the corner of a cupboard so hard I hit the floor. I wanted to say bashed, but I really think it was the first time I felt my head actually bounce. Then it was just me and the stars sparkling up from the kitchen floor. I screamed for help, but there was no one there. This time I really needed it. There were the basement steps, the hot crockpot, and so many drawer handles to bruise hips, walls to be slammed against, hair to lose. So much to fill nightmares and flashbacks for years to come.  There was one point in the episode that I cried so hard I gagged, that I begged my son to please not hurt me anymore. He no longer understands words, nor does he use them, so that was the extent of our conversation. Remember that this is the boy who was in a regular education setting until second grade, who had tested with a normal IQ years earlier. 

Ativan for him. Ice pack for me. Somehow the boxing match in our kitchen ended. The monster that had replaced my child retreated into dormancy for the time being and Thomas returned eventually. Until the next time. This level of aggression went on for 10 solid days. The requests (pleas, demands) for YouTubestarted to decrease, but he still hasn’t forgotten about it. Sometimes he cries, weeps with abandon, like he has lost his best friend, or everything he has ever loved in one fell swoop. It is nothing less than heartbreaking—not that I took it away, but that I ever let it go on long enough to rewire every pathway in his brain. 

What I want to tell you is this: get your kids off electronics. Go back to the days like those of our own childhoods. We played outside. We imagined. We drew. And read. And colored. We built forts out of furniture draped in blankets and sheets. We put puzzles together and played board games. If someone suggested to our parents that they hand their crying child a portable electronic device to shut him up in the grocery store, our parents would have thought that person was insane, if not neglectful, maybe even abusive. Maybe “normal” kids can recover, but I promise you, if you have a child on the spectrum, or one with any sort of behavioral problems, that child cannot, he will not. He will disappear bit by bit until you no longer recognize him at all. You will blink your eyes and your toddler will be scrolling faster than you can, typing words into the search bar, consuming so much visual and auditory stimulation that his brain simply cannot keep up. Every fiber of his being will respond, will adapt, will change. It will not be for the better. You can find something else to motivate, to teach, to reward. If you say otherwise, you are lying to yourself. I can only hope that you stop before it’s too late, before you are watching the remnants of your son or daughter screaming from behind a metal cage on your way to an alternate placement school while you consider if he wouldn’t be better off in an inpatient facility. Or worse.