Technology and our children, page 2

reply to post by spellbound

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The great indoors

A vast change has overtaken suburbia in the past two generations. The archetypal suburb was first and foremost because that's where people moved to raise families. Lawns and parks and lots of other families with children defined the suburb as a children's paradise. In the cultural mythos of the American Dream, childhood proceeds along the lines of the Little Rascals or Dennis the Menace or the Berenstain Bears: long days playing outside with other children, building clubhouses and forts, jumping rope and playing hopscotch, catching frogs and turtles, biking all over the place . . . pickup games of baseball and tag . . . tea parties with the other girls . . . sledding and snowball fights. Children were seldom at home. They were at a neighbor's house, or over at the playground, or the vacant lot, or down by the pond. It didn't matter as long as they were back for dinner. Until recently, play was outdoors, public, and free of charge.

Where are the children now? This is the question I asked myself one winter Saturday as I walked through the empty suburban streets and past the deserted playgrounds of my home town. Finally I saw a tiny figure dressed in a pink snowsuit, a little girl standing at the edge of her yard, waist deep in the snow. She dipped her mitten into the snow for a taste. Four hundred families in this neighborhood, most of them with children, and only a single five-year-old outdoors on a Saturday afternoon. And I cannot imagine her staying there very long, alone in the snow, the stillness broken only by the passing cars and that odd-looking lone pedestrian. Her life happens indoors.

When my son Matthew was four or five, he wanted a pocket knife just like his big brother. I decided to give him one, explaining carefully, "This knife is sharp, Matthew, and if you are not careful you will cut yourself." What happened? He was not careful, of course, and he cut himself. Not too seriously, but it hurt and there was blood. What did he learn from this? For one thing, he learned that knives are indeed dangerous—on their own merits, and not because one might get caught using one without permission. The second thing Matthew learned is that Dad is one smart dude. Dad was right about the knife. When Dad says something might happen, it's a good idea to listen.

No matter how deeply and thoroughly we frighten children with our power to invoke their survival anxiety, their natural curiosity and compulsion to test limits will eventually provoke them to "try it anyway," often in secret. When they find, as is often the case, that the consequences aren't as bad as their parents said they were, then parental authority loses all credibility. They find that no one loses an eye when they throw a paper airplane indoors, that they can smoke marijuana and not wake up in a crack house, that reading Harry Potter does not lead to Satanic ritual sacrifice. Now the stage is set for tragedy. On the one hand, they have always been insulated from the real consequences of their actions. On the other hand, the imposed substitute consequences (punishments) are no longer effective, because the wily teenager easily evades them by deceiving authority, not by abstaining from the behavior. The result is that the teenager acts as if he were immortal or invulnerable, and lies to his parents about everything he does.

reply to post by spellbound

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I do not agree totally but you do seem to have a point that without guidance from adults, too much technology could overwhelm and hinder social development but an adult who lets this happen to their child is doing something wrong anyway. Parents always have a responsibility to teach even if it is to teach how to use technology responsibly and to keep it all within moderation.

On the whole I think technology has the potential to transform children educationally and in many cases I believe that technology is enhancing our children more than not. Regrettably like anything, too much of something can be detrimental to health I completely agree with you. The see through walls scenario I am not concerned with however because I see that as a security service or military application and even if such a tech did happen to filter down to the civilian market then there would be counters quickly available that would screen such tech from invading privacy - Cause and effect, action and reaction.

Therefore I remain aware of it but not overly concerned at the moment.
My own teenage daughters taught me that technology is a great thing in general and is not a bugbear to be distrustful of. One of those teenagers is now twenty two the other is twenty and they were both heavily into technology as teenagers as they are now as young adults.
For all their technological proficiency which happened to surpass mine when it comes to intercommunication devices and social software, they learned much more about social interactions within and outside their peer groups via a plethora of social sites.

They learned via their circle of friends that not only could they meet up and do what teenagers do but they could use technology to their benefit in the context of staying safe, planning well ahead and determining character compositions, negative or positive within a male/female peer group that would have taken longer to assess had no technology been used.

For reiteration: From using technology this information was determined faster and more efficiently and though it could all have been done without the use of technology more time would have been expended and energy expended and perhaps safety compromised.

My thirteen year old daughter is also a technology buff but she is much more into history and art and has a great personal knowledge of things from history or other cultures that is at times quite surprising and impressive. She is absolutely passionate about Japanese culture and by using technology has started to learn how to write words and to talk in Japanese and though this could have been done with books and libraries, or bought-for-courses she instead took it upon herself to learn these things for herself via her computer with modest guidance or input from me.

Her capacity to learn quickly and with a level of proficiency is vastly improved with the ability she has learned from using technology under my instruction and now she is flying, always learning and wanting to find out more about history, art techniques and current events.

Three years ago my oldest daughter found herself stuck In Brisbane Australia with no money and alone (boyfriend breakup) with only her cell phone. She was starting to panic and she felt vulnerable. Via my own landline and Google earth I was quickly able to direct her in real time straight to the British consulate. Technology not only has the capacity to totally transform our lives in educational terms but it has that same capacity to do the same in countless other ways too from social to security and for me this is not a bad thing.

My girls went through the fads with cell phones that most other teenagers seem so fixated on but I see it as a positive learning curve that prepares them for an ever changing modern age. Sure it may seem shallow as teenagers seem fixated on some sort of overriding goal to outdo their peers in the gadget stakes and in my opinion a phone is a phone is a phone but my girls in particular at that stage in their technological awakening were amazing to watch sometimes. Their texting, literally their thumbs were a blur, the sounds of pressed keys simply a rattle as they texted and I was always quite awed at their texting expertise.

As adults this fixation on technology has waned and calmed down and they use the internet much more safely because they learned the hard way and through my instruction that the internet has to be seen like you perceive a city. Some areas are safer than others.

They use their phones as they were designed to be used, to communicate and to stay safe, no longer filled with a hundred numbers from a hundred different friends. They have learned that technology is a vital tool that has a definitive place as a subtle tool that fits in with their lives and does not consume them like it did when they were teenagers.

Of course I share the worries that many have that technology could become too much too fast and I will never subscribe to technological implantation or other type of technology that takes away freedoms to be a private person but technology is not to be feared it should be used as a tool that slots into our lives and enhances it.

My girls as adults are not socially lacking in anyway and their attitude to life can seem alien to me sometimes and I do not agree with everything they might get up to, they have done me proud.

They have many friends and their employment prospects are great. They both now have good jobs with a view to climbing their respective ladders. My youngest was recently promoted to supervisor and they are both very popular with a positive outlook on life and in no way have they been stunted by being technophiles as teenagers and in the current employment climate their positive outlook and confidence is doing them a great service. Embracing technology as greatly benefited them.

I say embrace technology and it will serve you until error or malfunction. If you see technology as a negative and shy away from it you will end up left behind and not long after that someone will come along and switch off the lights.





[edit on 13-10-2009 by SmokeJaguar67]

reply to post by artsyashley

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When my dad was a child he had three full meals a day, and desert. He was into art and models, so effectively he stayed inside most days. He hardly weighs anything.


Back then people didn't snack constantly, they had full meals and little else...but now, we have entire cupboards devoted to biscuits, baskets fulls of crisps, chocolate in the fridge. And even then it wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact that people often skip a meal to try to lose weight, only to find they infact gain more from all the snacking they then do because they're hungry.


I would say we need to sort out food issues before anything else....there are plenty of people who work in an office all day, then go home, they don't excercies but they arn't all overweight.


Then there is simply the way people grow, I was a thin but tall child, then by 13 I was only about average height, but quite podgy, now I am 17 and my height caught up making me tall again, effectively thinning me out. I didn't diet or excercise to do any of this...

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