With the increasing prevalence of technology such as cell phones, laptops, and tablets among other gadgets in our everyday lives, kids are being exposed to screens, quick data, and cheap communication earlier on each year. Now some may say that this is a good thing, for tablets and laptops especially provide access to a world of data and learning opportunities that prove beneficial and nurturing to a child’s learning. However, the use of tablets being included in school curriculum or even required to complete homework assignments starting as young as second grade is in my opinion, taking away from the genuine human experiences that I was able to have without these gadgets growing up at home and in the classroom.
Media and commentators often imply that as a millennial born in 1995, I am a part of this phone-obsessed, impatient, and materialistic generation. However, as I recall growing up, my generation did not have cell phones until we were entering high school, and when I say cell phones, I mean flip phones like Motorola Razors and Samsung Syncs that we would use to call our parents to ask for a ride. If we texted, we had to be careful to only text people in our same carrier or we would be charged and only a couple years later did the “cool” kids start getting full keyboards on their phones. We still learned how to write in cursive in 3rd grade, and all of our tests were by hand, in pencil or pen. (Sometimes our homework would get a little fancy, being entered online.)
Our form of “texting” our friends in middle school was first, emailing back and forth and then later when our parents gave the “OK” it was instant messaging on AIM. (We still had to make sure no one was on the phone first before we could use the internet for a while) 9th grade was when we all switched from MySpace to Facebook and from there it was booming. Even though the presence of technology in our lives was much greater than our parents before us and other generations before them, it was still not there, in our faces, at every moment that we were not immediately doing something. We didn’t need to be constantly entertained, we still had patience, we still enjoyed talking to our friends at lunch, and a lot of this was facilitated by the fact that we weren’t even allowed to have a phone on our person in school.
Today at a recital I saw a family handle their son during the performances while they were waiting for their daughter to play the flute, and it was sad to watch. Immediately after sitting down, the mother pulled out an iPad and a pair of Beats with ninja turtles on them and set the tablet on the boy’s lap and put the headphones on his head and turned the volume up. He was quiet and preoccupied for the majority of performances however when something occurred on the iPad, with his big noise cancelling headphones on he began talking to his mom in a loud, unaware voice asking her to fix it while she tried to hush him and told him to be quiet in tones too low for him to hear. This continued for a while as she continued to not remove the headphones and he continued to talk during a nerve-wracking performance for the instrumentalist. The incident happened at least two more times during the performances and eventually, she had the father remove him from the room.
Here is what I saw wrong with this situation: First, upon coming to a performance with brilliant young students showcasing their skills on their instruments, the mother and father should have taken this as an opportunity for their son to see young people learning specialized skills (especially that of his older sister) and to hear and appreciate music. Instead, the moment the boy sat down he was removed from the situation and given a distraction to keep him “well-behaved” and “occupied.” I would hope that someday my kids will not only appreciate and celebrate their sibling’s accomplishments, but also be able to learn the proper social skills and politeness to be able to handle a live classical performance. Second, the mother did not remove the headphones and remediate the situation while he began speaking during the performance, but instead chose to make an angry and embarrassed face and tell him to turn it down and to be quiet and play his games. Perhaps instead, she could have removed him from the room and explained to him why it is important that he respect the performers and pay attention to their work.
Perhaps this article is beginning to sound like a disorganized “technology is bad” rant, however it is meant to be a call-out to the countless situations I have seen in grocery stores, movie theaters, recitals, and other public spaces where parents are, instead of allowing their kids to learn how to behave and interact with other people, choosing to avoid the issue and appease their child’s tantrums and inattentiveness with screens and tuning out from the world around them. This is creating a new generation of kids that no longer looks their friend up in the phone book, calls their home phone and asks a parent if they may speak with “Tommy,” but instead is messaging their friend through the Call of Duty Live Chat at the age of five while they shoot down enemies or zombies.
This is creating a generation of kids that must be constantly entertained, that cannot patiently wait for a train to arrive in five minutes but instead needs to pull out a phone and scroll through Instagram. I am not saying that I do not fall for such things, yes you will see me scrolling through Facebook all too often and getting caught in the world of social media. Try losing the technology for a day and doing with your child what we did as kids such as playing a game of pickup soccer, reading a book for fun, or making music. This creates the foundations for patience, creativity and effective communication that will help your child excel at life.
