Tech Tuesday
My six-year-old daughter is a zookeeper. She's got all sorts of animals in her zoo, from the standard tigers and bears to the more exotic peppermint striped zebra.
Hers is a Tiny Zoo – one of the many free apps down-loadable on the iPhone.
When I first let her start using our iTouch at the age of four, I felt a little weird. After all, it's not like I had anything like this when I was her age. The most sophisticated pieces of technology in our house back then were the phone and the television and I wasn't allowed to use either of those by myself.
It wasn't a safety issue, either. Fear for her safety if she broke it perhaps, but how could she hurt herself with a slim little device? I felt weird because I, like so many other parents my age, are entering a realm unfamiliar to us: kids with technology.
It shouldn't be that unfamiliar. After all, we were the generation who could program VCR's not to blink and school our parents in Sega and Atari video games. They couldn't figure out how we could follow those pixelated images that went across the screen. My own mother liked playing Ms. Pac Man but never graduated beyond that. Even without the arthritis, I can't see her playing on our PS3.
So why are we so fearful of technology?
The main reason for me, as I sit and watch her sprawled inelegantly on the couch tapping and scrolling, is I keep worrying about the same things that the media tells us parents to worry about:
- She’s going to turn into a fat, lazy slob who sits in front of the computer all day.
- She will develop some sort of psychological condition from excessive media and video game violence.
- She will eschew normal, face-to-face interactions in favor of instantaneous online feedback and become a shallow, attention-seeking shadow of herself.
In reality, she loves to ride her bike and play outside as much as, if not more than, she likes video games and computer time. She has too much energy to be contained by any one activity too long (and probably my ADHD). Since we are not living anywhere that restricts her going outside, she plays in the backyard and rides her bike up and down our street.
I admit to being a gigantic sci-fi fan so she has been watching shows like "Stargate" and "Doctor Who"for quite some time. I was a total scaredy-cat when I was her age, so that made me hyper vigilant about making sure she was comfortable with the things she was seeing and making sure she understood the nature of television and movies. Aside from a few things that would creep any normal person out, she handles it much better than I ever did. Video game violence is the least of my worries anyway, since most of us in the house play strategy games more than shooters.
Number three, I hope, will be a non-issue by the time most kids her age are allowed online. Just as rules had to be created for online research, new rules and accepted practices are being crafted now for job seeking and posting of personal information. Now that we have had a chance to use social media and learn the pitfalls, hopefully we can avoid having our children hang themselves repeatedly with a social noose.
As I think back to my own childhood, I think what really scares me about kids and technology isn’t that they will become sociopaths or take over the world. I fear they will look to their screens - be it TV, movie or computer - for inspiration. Gone will be the days when ideas ran wild and people were capable of creating amazing things just because they thought ‘what if...’
Then, as my daughter abruptly decides she’s taken good enough care of her animals for the moment, the iTouch is set aside and she immediately takes off into her room and comes out wearing her indian girl costume.
"Mom, will you help me make a headband?"
Somehow, I think all this worrying isn’t really necessary after all.
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