We attempted to tell our children about the benefits of having some offline time. An hour or two, even a couple of minutes. Just to take a walk, to ride a bicycle, to play in the snow or watch springtime lightning storms. We printed up contracts with consequences for spending too long online, had our children sign on dotted lines, forced them to make promises that were never fulfilled. We begged. We pleaded. They told us they understood. Then they went back to their rooms to build invisible cities.

Their grades plummeted. All their homework was in the ether, and we watched them moving their hands in the air, looking no different than when they played online games. It sure didn’t seem like math, but how could we check? We petitioned the school, wrote letters to the board of education, and launched isolated but vocal resistance at PTA meetings. Online education was fine, we said, but could we go back to tablets and laptops? We were patiently listened to by kindly educators who all nodded their implanted heads. They smiled at us with illuminated eyes and shared the good news: Our school’s STEM program had just received a grant for low-income implantation. Philanthropically minded tech foundations would be offering free online textbooks; soon our district would be completely implanted, the libraries of the world as accessible to our children’s brains as the back of their eyes.

Why didn’t anyone understand? Our children needed sleep. Late at night, they lay in the darkness of their bedrooms wide-eyed and grinning. “Go to sleep,” we told them. They needed rest. They were children. And yet, were they? Their minds now accessed every history lesson, every blog, every Googled answer to any argument we had. They’d long ago surpassed us. “Go to sleep!” we yelled, and immediately felt horrible about our parenting. Later, we’d peek into their rooms, see their closed eyes, their faces reminding us of the toddlers we once knew, and we’d sigh with relief. Yet how could we ever be sure they were sleeping?

We decided to have the chips removed. We returned to the store and waited through endless lines only to have a young technician hand us a pamphlet portraying two sad-looking teenagers. Yes, we could have the chips removed, but removal came with disastrous side effects: anxiety, social isolation, depression, suicide. We were reminded about our service contracts—the ones we’d signed but had never actually read. “Are you kidding?” we asked when the young salesperson showed us the contract. Would we really be paying this off for the next five years? Yes, the boy said. Even if the chip was removed? Yes, he said. What if we canceled our plan? We’d still be paying it off, he told us again, smiling gently.