Wednesday, September 16, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon In the PINES By T. Lee Brown What a great year It9s been a tough year for kids, including mine. Tough year for parents, including me. Tough year for educa- tors. Guess who9s not hav- ing a tough year? Multi-zillion-dollar tech corporations, that9s who. The smoke-choked, politically divided, pan- demic mess that is 2020 has brought riches of users and data to companies that make money from digi- tal device use. If you9re Fortnite, Amazon, TikTok, or Google, this year is for you! For the rest of us? Dang, 2020 suuuuuucks. We don9t have normal concerts and parties and school. Fun vacations and hugs from grandparents are a rarity. It9s understandable that we9d turn to some extra tech for comfort, though we know it9s kinda unhealthy. Our family usually shuts off devices from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. That way we get 24 hours of real presence and together- time. It9s called Digital Shabbat. Even something so basic feels harder to do nowadays. This week we cheated, leav- ing my husband9s phone on in case my family in Lane County had to evacuate. By Saturday night I was glued to the fire websites, weeping over the loss of my favorite spot on the McKenzie River. Kinda unhealthy, yes. Also understandable, given the circumstances. But what if our tech use in general goes far beyond kinda- unhealthy? What if we9ve entered an era of deep, cor- rosive wrongness that9s destroying our culture, our democracy, and our kids? Experts believe we have entered that era. People are starting to catch on. Soaring into the Top Ten on Netflix this week came a documentary called