Did everyone survive the Nationwide Cellular Outage of 2024? 

Me? Barely.

Firstly, I was spooked awake about 30 minutes before my alarm clock was set to go off, by my pre-teen daughter asking me if I paid the phone bill this month. Not the best start to my day.  

I told her yes and to leave me alone. She stomps out of the room. I proceed to pull my phone out from under my pillow and I am immediately caught off guard (for the second time this morning) by the “SOS” staring back at me from the corner of my iPhone.  

So, of course I am like… “Damn, did I pay the phone bill?!”  

Well, with no service there was really nothing I could do about it right then, so I went ahead and got up and we all began getting ready to start our day. On the car ride to school, I could feel Emerson glaring at me from the corner of my eye, silently shaming me for supposedly missing this payment and forcing her to ride to school without texting her friends (that she is about to see in literally 7 minutes).  

I uncomfortably turn the radio up and what do you know… it’s Erin McCarty with 710 Keel informing us that there has been a reported nationwide cellular outage.  

I glance over at Emerson; we make brief eye contact, and she just acts like nothing ever happened… like she didn’t accuse me of not paying my bills and hasn’t silenting been cursing me in her head this whole ride to school. Nope, nothing.  

Ok, cool.  

I get to work and finally get my phone hooked up to Wi-Fi and see a few articles pop up about the outage and then of course there’s all these posts about how the world is ending, and Jesus is coming because we don’t have phone service. And then, there’s also a handful of blog posts on the mom groups I follow on Facebook talking about how this outage is a blessing. I was intrigued, so I dove in.  

One was talking about how we as mothers spend too much time on our phones and ignore our kids… Of course, I have seen these posts before and usually I get a quick pang of guilt as I am sitting on my phone ignoring my kids while reading a blog about how horrible it is to sit on my phone and ignore my kids.  

This message isn’t a bad one. We could all stand to cut back on our phone usage. The problem I have is the argument that technology has everything to do with the way the world is these days and that our kids are probably going to grow up to be… well I don’t exactly know because nobody ever says… but it of course is something horrendous. I don’t know if I agree with this completely for a couple of different reasons. 

One, I ignore my kids even when I am not on the phone and my parents ignored me when I was growing up, as well. So, I don’t think it has anything to do with technology or this modern-day generation of parents. I ignore my kids when I am cooking dinner, or if I am having a conversation with another adult and sometimes when I am daydreaming about drinking a few too many Pina Colados while on vacation in Mexico by MYSELF! 

Second, ignoring your kids every now and then is probably good for them. Let them figure things out on their own for a bit. If they are happily entertaining themselves for half an hour – great! People get ignored in real life all the time. I feel like constantly being at your kid’s beck and call every second of every day is just setting them up for failure. They are going to get out into the real world and wonder why in the hell they aren’t in the spotlight or the center of attention at all times. 

Lastly, why are parents always trying to find a way to guilt trip other parents?! It is quite annoying. After reading this article, I am thinking… okay, let me add “looking at my phone too much” to this growing list of other horrible things I do as a parent, like hiding out in my closet so I can eat a piece of cake without having to share it, or being too impatient, shouting too much and the one that keeps me up the most at night – feeding them microwaved chicken nuggets three times a week.  

Give me a break! If I want to disconnect from the real world for ten minutes of mindless scrolling, while my kids entertain themselves for a bit… That’s what I am going to do.  

Honestly, picking my phone up for a quick break is probably going to save us all because there’s absolutely no telling what would happen if I had to play grandma to another one of my kid’s fake baby dolls one more time today. It’s only 5 p.m. and I have had custody of this child for about 8 hours. I am sure her mother is probably lounging around playing on her iPad. Currently considering calling CPS… or even worse – throwing her to the wolves on one of my Facebook Mom Groups.

“Ashton, come get this kid!”

(Paige Nash is a mother of three girls, a journalist for the Webster Parish Journal and a publisher for the Bienville and Claiborne Parish Journal.)