TECHNOLOGY AND OUR KIDS


I am increasingly struck by the broad range  of reactions to the  continuous flow of technology that never seems to stop bombarding us from all sides - sometimes seeming to overwhelm.    There are those who embrace it as though it is a new source of strength echoing Kevin Kellys view that we “evolve’ with technology and that it is a source of good. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_technology_wants_kevin_kelly_theory_of_evolution.php

There are others who believe that it is an insidious negative fog that is slowly strangling the creativity out of our youth as they while away their lives in front of TV’s ,  online playing interactive games or Tweeting and ‘connecting’ via social networks.    Jaron Lanier says that ‘ technology reduces our humanity’  - promoting the hive mentality over individual expression. (http://www.jaronlanier.com/) 

I have to say that, whenever I find my daughter watching a mindless sitcom (aimed at teenagers although she is only 8) I find myself firmly in the second camp.   Her technological interaction also includes time online playing Moshi Monsters or Club Penguin.   I find myself caught up in an incredible dilemma – I am a tech-fan  – I have spent most of my working career advocating and enacting the power of technology as a force for change and hopefully for good – mobile phones in Africa and the Middle East;  ICT in South Africa and online security globally.   I am undoubtedly firmly in the Kelly camp – and yet I find it so difficult to reconcile this with the impact I see it having on my children.  My daughter in particular.   The mindless absorption of ‘sitcom pornography’ ( which seems to be the only way to describe it ) is the technological equivalent of  ‘eating white bread’  as my colleague Christian Hessler so eloquently described it to me.     You are going through the act of eating – it is filling but there are no 'nutrients'.    It is mindless, 'nutritionless',  a waste of time and is inculcating bad values and getting them into the wrong sort of habits.   

Or am I being,  as my family like to mock me,  a grumpy ‘old’ man.   Should I just accept that the world has changed and that our children,  as digital natives,  are  wired differently  and interact with the digital world seamlessly?      Or is the right approach that of the ‘Tiger parent’  who does not  allow their kids any ‘free’ time and who structure activities 24 x 7? 

I guess I want a balance and I want my kids to spend more time outside playing in the garden and feeling the dirt under their fingernails.  Maybe I am just wishing for them the childhood I had growing up under sunny skies in South Africa and not the gray drab monotony that is London.   I guess you can’t have everything.    I am just grateful they are happy, healthy and wonderful people.   I guess I will continue to vacillate between being a tech fan and a Luddite.  

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