Raisng Humans in the Age of the Algorithm

Artist Unknown

Raising Humans in the Age of the Algorithm

I did not know when they placed my first daughter in my arms

that I was also being issued a lifetime subscription to panic.

She arrived pink and furious, a small, squalling bundle of lungs and litigation,

and somewhere in the discharge paperwork was a clause about Wi-Fi.

Father of daughters.

Guardian of passwords.

Warden of the glowing rectangle.

I used to fear stairs.

Open flames.

Electrical sockets shaped exactly like curiosity.

Now I fear the algorithm.

The algorithm has no face. It does not sleep.

It knows my children’s names before it knows mine.

It has opinions about their eyebrows.

I stand in the kitchen doorway watching them scroll,

thumbs flicking like Vegas dealers passing out curated anxiety.

“Did you know,” one says, not looking up,

“that if your jawline isn’t symmetrical you will die alone?”

I have been alive for fifty-six years with a jawline that resembles a melted candle.

I am married.

I have a mortgage.

I own three flashlights.

I consider this a victory.

But the phone whispers.

It hums like a tiny electric oracle:

Be thinner.

Be smoother.

Be richer.

Be other.

I clear my throat, summon my most ancient dad wisdom.

“Hey,” I say, “you’re already astonishing.

Also, you can’t Venmo self-worth.”

They stare at me as though I have just tried to explain what a fax machine is.

Fatherhood in the digital era is like trying to teach meditation at a monster truck rally.

I stage small rebellions.

Board game night.

Actual books made of paper.

A walk outside where the trees do not ask you to subscribe.

We sit under a sky that does not filter itself.

Clouds moving slowly without a comment section.

“Look,” I say, “that’s a hawk.”

They glance up the way tourists glance at a statue before taking a selfie with it.

“Cool,” they say. “Is it on TikTok?”

I breathe.

Inside me lives a prehistoric father, cave-dad, whose only job

was to keep sabertooths away and maybe invent soup.

He did not have to compete with influencers named after fruit.

I want to build a moat around their minds.

Fill it with skepticism.

Install a drawbridge labeled “Reality.”

Instead I negotiate screen time like a hostage mediator.

“If you come to dinner,” I say, “I will not mention your posture.”

They arrive, reluctant and luminous,

faces still glowing faintly like they’ve been kissed by a minor sun.

We talk.

At first it’s awkward.

Silence sits at the table like an uninvited uncle.

Then one of them laughs.

A real laugh.

Not the typed kind.

Not the skull emoji.

And it hits me—this is the whole mission.

Not to smash the phones.

Not to flee to a cabin where the nearest signal is a confused squirrel.

But to keep building small, stubborn sanctuaries

where they remember they are not content.

They are not metrics.

Not engagement rates.

Not a before picture.

They are fierce and complicated and sometimes mean before breakfast.

They are half-finished thoughts and chipped nail polish

and questions that could bend steel.

They cry over comments written by someone named DragonLord77,

whose profile picture is a cartoon egg.

I want to find DragonLord77 and gift him a library card and a long nap.

Instead I sit beside my daughter while she stares at the wound of a glowing screen.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

She nods.

And in that nod is the whole trembling world—

the ancient ache to be seen and the modern horror of being seen too much.

So I tell her stories about my own teenage catastrophes.

Ridiculous hair choices.

Music I believed was profound.

A leather bracelet I wore for a year that smelled like regret.

She laughs. The hurt loosens.

This is the counter-spell. Ridiculous honesty.

Embarrassment as inheritance.

I cannot delete the internet.

I cannot out-yell the feed.

But I can model how to be a person who puts the phone down

and picks up a moment.

I can be the embarrassing man who dances in the kitchen.

Who says “I love you” with the reckless volume

of someone who does not care who hears it.

I can remind them that the body they’re editing

is the same body that can climb a tree,

carry a friend, throw a punch at injustice.

I can teach them that silence is not emptiness.

It is breathing room.

Some nights I fail spectacularly.

I confiscate.

I lecture.

I Google “how to parent in 2026”

and fall into an article that tells me I’ve already ruined them.

But in the morning one of them will shuffle into the kitchen,

hair defying gravity and good sense,

and lean against me like I am still the safest thing in the room.

And I realize:

The algorithm is loud.

But love is stubborn.

It repeats itself.

Daily.

Unskippable.

Father of daughters.

Standing between them and a world that wants to brand their souls.

I am underqualified.

Overcaffeinated.

Deeply in love.

And if I have to, I will fight the entire internet

armed only with sarcasm, pancakes,

and the radical notion that my girls are already enough.

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©2026 Christopher Reilley 

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