When will this remarkable onslaught of new technology end?  – Simon Carter

My first thought was this – I hope Ben doesn’t see them. He needs more exercise in his life, not less.

And doing up shoelaces certainly count as exercise for someone who spends hours each week in a chair playing ultra-realistic computer games.

In fairness, as they cost $350 US dollars – about £270 in English cash – he’s not going to be able to afford to buy them, but that is not the point. The point is that technology is now available where you can tie your trainers up without bending down.

Where do Nike go from here? Can they patent trainers that actually walk for you, rather like the ‘techno trousers’ in the classic Wallace and Gromit ‘Wrong Trousers’ film? Ben would no doubt buy those as he’d conserve some more energy.

After all, my son isn’t one for long walks. Or short walks, for that matter.

For large parts of his school life, he has lived on the same road as his school – door to door was about eight minutes. If for whatever reason – he was late, it was raining – he was offered a lift, he would take it.

‘Ben, I used to walk 40 minutes from my house to my school when I was your age,’ I always told him.

‘In the rain, the cold and the snow. And back again.’

This was true, I did. But today’s technology-dependent millennials – well, one of mine anyway – pulled a face when confronted with a stroll time which would have been sheer luxury for me in the early 1980s.

Ellen has a watch with an in-built pedometer, which tells her how many thousand steps she takes in a day. Regularly it’s many thousands – boosted by dog walks, after-school sports clubs, walking to friends’ houses. Ben has a pedometer on his phone, which as he takes it everywhere with him – millennial, you see – is as reliable for steps taken as a watch pedometer.

One day he did less than 100 steps. From the time he got up to the time he went to bed, that was his sum total of a day’s activity.

His heat map would have been a line from his gaming chair to the meal table twice and a couple of trips to the toilet (next door to his bedroom). He was delighted when he realised how few steps he’d taken.

This is what we are up against, parents of millennials!

This is what technology has done to our children.

Is this really what it’s come to? 

Ben was once asked to walk the dog to the nearby meadow. 

He didn’t fancy that chore, so pretended he’d been out by re-arranging the dog’s lead from where it had been left.

Suspicions were aroused when it was discovered the dog had dry feet – and dry fur for that matter – when it had been raining.

To avoid repeats, he was ordered to take photos of the dog at the meadow and then email them to his mum to prove he was there. 

This is what life had come to, asking for pictorial evidence that a millennial had done what had been asked of them.

In contrast, Ellen has always been happy to walk the dog. Is this a difference between boys and girls? The latter, in my family at least, have always been far keener when it comes to exercising pets. 

Once I came back from work and Ellen had put the flagposts I used for football training in a slalom line on the grass and was weaving in and out of them pushing a wheelbarrow.

Closer examination revealed my cat was sat on an upturned box in the barrow, looking miserable. ‘Bugsy’s fat, he needs some exercise,’ I was told.

He was then attached to the dog’s lead and walked – well, dragged to be more exact – around the garden. Bugsy looked even more miserable by this stage.

I just hope none of the neighbours were watching ...