Few sounds are as uplifting in life as the pitter-patter of tiny feet rushing towards an opening front door while little voices shout “Daddy!” “Daddy!” at the top of their lungs, with unconstrained love and joy, as you make your way back home after a long business trip abroad.

That moment, short as it was, made everything worthwhile — soulless airport lounges, plastic inflight food, endless security controls, cancellations and reschedulings. Taking a short love bath in the arms of one’s young children soothed all.

These moments meant so much. Only when they stopped did one notice how much they meant and how much we lost when they were gone. That was it. I opened the door fully, picked my bags up, and with a heavy sigh, ventured into the darkness. I walked down the corridor, went towards the living-room, a little way down on the left. I chanced upon an entrance. The four children were there. Slouched on the sofa, their souls entranced by devices I didn’t know they had been given, and entirely consumed by worlds beyond their screens. As I stared in disbelief, one of them looked up and grunted a distracted “hello”. He returned to the virtual world he had briefly left within a second.

“They had come back to the real world in which they had been born and were destined to live.”

My anger spilt over. There was to be no negotiations, no compromise. A choice had to be made: Either I would allow them “They had come back to the real world in which they had been born and were destined to live.” One day, after a particularly average mid-winter trip, I landed back in Salzburg, Austria. I went through border control and jumped into a cab. In ten short minutes I stood in front of my door. I dropped my bags on the floor in preparation. I would have to bend down very low to pick up the flock of children as they ran down the corridor and jumped on my ageing frame. I then opened the door and was greeted by a deadly silence. It was a crushing, but still vague, disappointment. Was there no one home? Was I at the wrong address? Or more likely, had I landed in another dimension? Stillness, unbearable stillness.

to make the leap into a world way beyond our family and neighbourhood or I would stop this and bring them back. I walked towards them, grabbed the devices, threw all in the bin and banned them for eternity from our household. Awaking from their addicted slumber, they hollered, begged and threw themselves on the ground. Within half an hour, though, crying gave way to childish laughter. Finally, they saw “Dad” and they jumped into my arms. Tears of joy nearly formed on the side of my eyes. I, for my part, promised, if they were banned from devices, I would walk the walk by reducing my time on devices to 30 minutes a day. Over time the rules have been relaxed somewhat but we play, talk, read together as if it’s 1999. And life, you will find, is as fun now as it was then.