Just before the end of Spring break a few weeks ago, my wife and I took our kids camping for a few days. I'm not the biggest fan of camping, but we've done this since we were dating, because it's an inexpensive way to get away from the real world and all its responsibilities, and force me to get offline for more than a few hours at a time (I'm not the only technophile who gets the shakes after ninety luddite minutes, am I?)

This year, rather than some sort of rustic camping experience on a secluded beach or high up in the mountains, we did some car camping down in Chula Vista, at this campground we used to take the kids to when they were really little. With our oldest heading off to college in a few months, I think it was as much about the nostalgia of those simple days as it was about the convenience of easily-accessible showers and a camp store, but if we were expecting anything like what we saw ten years ago, we didn't find it.

First of all, the campground has WiFi. Wait. What? WiFi? In a campground? Yes, JOSHUA, there is WiFi, and you can play Global Thermonuclear War from the comfort of your own tent. It was hard to believe, but I saw just as many guys sitting at a picnic table playing World of Warcraft as I saw people reading books in the shade of a tree.

There have always been RVs with television antennas, but nearly all the ones I saw this year had portable satellite dishes, so their owners wouldn't miss a single moment of CNBC or the TV Guide channel while they were away from home.

Isn't the whole point of camping to get away from these things? I thought so, but I'm probably out of touch, and the people who choose a well-developed, freeway-close campground probably aren't looking for the most rustic experience in the world, which is entirely reasonable, I think.

However, I did see something in this campground that really grinds my gears. While I played Frisbee with my kids, a bunch of other kids riding bikes around us, I saw one child, probably 7 or 8 years old, sitting outside at a picnic table, playing a gaming console. This kid was glued to his button mashing, oblivious to everything going on around him. His parents brought him camping, where he was surrounded by other kids his age who were all playing together, and there he was, glued to the PS2.

What. The. Fuck.

Now don't get me wrong: I love gaming. I love technology. In fact, I almost wrote a column this week all about the majesty of handeld games in the 70s and 80s (Merlin and Mattel D&D FTW!) and when I was younger, I took my Mattel Football and then Gameboy just about everywhere with me, but my parents gave me limits, (I didn't miss Old Faithful erupting because I was playing Tetris, for example) and they certainly never brought our Atari 2600 with us on a vacation.

I've been ruminating on this for some time, but I've recently concluded that there is, in fact, an entire generation of parents, about my age or just a little older, who are substituting technology for parenting. As a result, there's an entire generation of children who are overstimulated and undersocialized, and in some cases heavily medicated, because their damn parents would rather distract them with a DVD or video game than, you know, interact with them.

Is this the new way we're supposed to raise emotionally healthy and well adjusted kids? I must have missed a memo, because these people are everywhere.

Next time you're in the freeway and you see one of those obnoxious SUVs with the fucking little family sticker on the back window (you know, the one that has the adorable little stick figures of mom, dad, their seven kids and the dog) take a look as you pass them. In four out of five cases, the seven kids are all watching a DVD. On the way to the store. Because god forbid they have ten minutes in a row where they're not watching Dora or The Wiggles.

In restaurants, it's all too common to see parents completely ignoring their kid while he plays a PSP or Nintendo DS, and I've recently seen kids watching an ultra-portable DVD player while they drink Coke after Coke as mom talks on the cell phone, oblivious to everyone around her – including her child.

There's a car commercial running right now that is an unintentionally powerful and disturbing commentary on how many people in this generation of parents are raising their kids. It starts in a school lunch room, filled with kids who are jumping and running around, throwing food, and generally raging out of control. A teacher tries to get them to settle down, and is ignored, so he flips down a little display, like you'd see in a car-based DVD player, and the entire room instantly turns into slackjawed, television watching zombies. What's the message here? "If you can't get your kids to listen to you, don't worry, all it takes is a little DVD action to do it for you, so you can get back to the peace and quiet you inexplicably thought you'd enjoy when you had seven fucking kids."

I know this basic phenomenon is nothing new. As long as television has existed, parents have sat their kids in front of it while they did other things, but the current portability of media, and the complexity and depth of handheld video games, is leading to a generation of kids who are so used to its constant presence, when it's taken away, they just don't know what to do with themselves -- and neither do their parents. If you've ever seen a kid running around a grocery store like a ferret on crystal meth, while their hapless parent stands by and avoids eye contact with other shoppers, you know what I mean.

When this generation of kids, who have never learned how to sit still or entertain themselves for more than a few minutes at a time, grow up and meet the creepy home schooled kids whose parents have substituted mythology for science and history, the shit is really going to hit the fan.

When that day comes, though, I have a plan: I'll just carry a portable DVD player with me at all times. If any of them tries to give me shit when I'm collecting my social security check, a little Dora should transform them from annoying Customer Service Jackass into helpful Customer Service Zombie in a matter of seconds.

Wil Wheaton is totally winning this contest he's in with Rob Corddry.