Right before the holidays, I
noticed a status update of a family member’s on Facebook that said: “Fellow
Parents! For my kids: Nintendo DS or iPod Touch?” These kids are 5 and 7. As if
that wasn’t bad enough, a comment from one of her friends said: “The iPod is so much easier that even the one to two year olds can figure out how to use some pretty
cool learning apps. Obviously there are different apps for older kids. I feel
like from what I have seen of the ds it doesn’t have a lot of learning apps.
Plus you can get onto the internet with the iPod too.” Does anyone else see the
problem here? We are the age of the quick and simple result – check Google for
an answer on your iPhone and you’re good to go. Our society’s intense
dependence on these gadgets is extremely worrying, especially for the future
generations who are growing up with technologically dependent parents and
learning to be dependent themselves.
I see more and more people at the
caf with their heads down scrolling through Facebook on their smart phones than
actually engaging in a conversation with the people they’re sitting with. If
it’s this bad already, and our generation has only been exposed to these things
from the time we were teenagers, how bad will it get for the generations to
come who will know it from birth? Kids like the ones in my family, and
apparently even one to two year olds, are learning to depend on and use
technology. What happened to reading a book, or playing outside with the
neighborhood kids? A true fear of mine is that within the next twenty to forty
years, the social skills we need in our society will be few and far between; it
will be increasingly difficult to get people’s attention or to talk to someone
without the safety net of their cell phone.
Now we can’t just expect to wean
ourselves off of these things and have all of the problems disappear. Because
honestly I, and everyone (literally everyone) I know, use a cell phone and
laptop every single day – it’s just the way the world works nowadays. Not to
mention, technological advances have improved the efficiency of the world in
many ways. But there comes a point when you have to realize that too much
exposure to this kind of stuff is not good, especially for kids. I think if we
scale it down a little bit, especially when we are with friends or family, and
put the cell phones and the social networks in our pockets and in the back of
our minds, then maybe we can save the younger generations from a bunch of
awkward encounters in person, without an iPhone to hide behind.
The worry you have is not unique to these experiences. It's a worry I think folks tend to have in general, so long as they're paying attention.
ReplyDeleteI have an interesting perspective on this due to having lived (as it was rightly named) in a "hole" for five years. I came back to the world about a year ago, and discovered that I absolutely could not function with people without a cell phone. I had never texted, and the last time I saw cell phones, their primary function had been for use as... A telephone. It was bizarre sitting at a table with a friend and her parents at a restaurant, where all three were looking at pictures my friend's brother had posted on Facebook.
In my example, the parents are just as new as my friend is to the technology. Why should they be expected to exhibit a good balance example when it is just as new and bewildering to them? For myself, I have lived with computers in my family since I was 11 years old and my parents, after many battles, have taught me how to manage computer time versus social time effectively.
I feel, however, that that's the trick. This technology is new, and we have not yet developed etiquette and what's expected socially. I don't honestly feel we will get as bad as you projected, but I do feel that we will be developing certain social rules which parents will teach their children.
You sound like the Old Guy living in the house next door, waving a cane and shouting "Get off my lawn!" In other words, I'm getting the impression that since *you* didn't grow up using a particular technology the way people are now, you feel that it is unhealthy or wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teenager in the 1970s, there were only two ways to find something out:
1. Find someone who knew, and ask them (or attend a class they were teaching)
2. Find a book with the information
And.... that was it. No iTunes University. No Wikipedia. No googling. Frankly, I'm thrilled that I can use my smartphone to find out anything anywhere anytime. I'm deliriously happy that education will have to move away from "forced memorization of facts" towards searching methodologies and source assessment.
Is it wrong to depend and use technology? Of course not. Unless you're Amish (or embrace Survivalist ideology), you would die pretty quickly if infrastructure failed. Where does your electricity, water, heat, and food come from?
I'm likewise not too concerned about evolving social skills. Your parents and grandparents had elaborate etiquette that revolved around activities that you no longer engage in, like formal dinner parties. As people adapt to social media as intermediated by smartphones, they will evolve new social skills. As an introvert, I was thrilled when the answering machine became common and I am no longer held hostage by anyone who called.
Let's here it for intermediated social interactions!
Lilyfren: I completely agree. I'm not suggesting we get rid of technology because that would be absolutely impossible: I used a cell phone and a computer 24-7. I know that's the way the world is now and I'm fine with it. Honestly I wouldn't know what to do without it! I hope that when the time comes where we ~do know how to handle this new technology, parents will be able to express the proper etiquette and the importance of a split between social and technological time.
ReplyDeleteNotelrac: If I came off sounding as if I meant that growing up with technology was wrong, then that was a mistake on my part. I would say that it is not necessarily wrong per say to depend on technology, because the advances that we've been able to come up with are incredible, and I'm not saying that what things like the iPhone have been able to achieve are not great because they obviously are. Google is a HUGE innovation I completely agree it is extremely useful. I guess my problem lies simply in the way that technology (more specifically smart phones) seeps its way into social lives. At least in my experiences, there are some people who completely ignore you, who don't watch where they're walking, who are completely zoned out of reality when they're on their phones and that's just something that bothers me. I don't dispute how useful these phones must be and not EVERYONE that has one does this (I'm sure), but seeing as I live on a college campus and see this every single day, it's just something that I find worrying. I've seen children ~in my own family~ that are already doing this. I understand that as people adapt they will latch onto a new social etiquette, but for me, personally, I like actual conversations rather than text messaging.
Social norms for emergent technology are, just like everything else, established by how individuals interact with each other. Society had to shake out new etiquette rules when the telephone was first invented. And again when cellphones became popular. Now, it's dealing with asynchronous SMS messaging.
ReplyDeleteIf you do not like people ignoring you face to face in favor of an electronically intermediated communication, speak out in as non-confrontational and non-threatening fashion as you are able to. Point out that you have gone to an extra effort from those others, in taking the time to transport yourself to be same geographical locus as them, and that you expect them to respect that work on your part.
Or you could help to establish a different social norm, one that accepts this behavior. When someone completely ignores you, return the favor by whipping out your own smartphone phone and ignoring them back.