April 11, 2018
Gone are the days when we never heard of counsellors. We grew as confident, handsome, balanced and beautiful individuals. We lived in bigger family units (joint families) with minimum advancement and less things around. Friendships and relationships mattered more for us than entertainment itself. We never thought of personality complexes.
Today’s buzz word is complexity. Life, humans and human relationships themselves have become complex. This has subsequently led our children to imbibe that complexity which is clearly evident in their behaviour, attitudes, demands and responses. Kids have become beyond our control. Why all this change? Have we ever reflected on and analysed it?
A mother of a kid shared her woes with me one day, saying. “I realized that what had started off as a simple attraction towards gadgets soon became an inseparable part of my son’s life. Now he is beyond my control.”
Another parent stopped me on my way to school, complaining, “My son as it turns out... during the minimal time he spares from his busy digital schedule to spend with me, he speaks only about his day-to-day experiences which included nothing but - shooting angry birds, running from temple to temple, losing candies, and enthusiastically proclaiming how he punched a character on screen to bleed. I felt really sorry for my kid.”
What has led to this complexity? I should not compare or can never compare our childhood days with that of the present generation. But I realise that things have turned out to be worse ...Did we not spend a lot more time with our parents? Did we not have so many real friends...Did we not run around and play freely? Yes, there were no mobile phones then. Getting permission to even switch on the TV was a huge achievement. And video games were considered a luxury.
On the other hand, today, gadgets are everywhere and dominate a child's childhood. Today’s parents are thrilled to see their children as experts with the latest technologies at their fingertips. But they often fail to realise that the more these gadgets become their friends, the more they start losing real human friends.
Questions that have been troubling me
Is being a technocrat or techno-genius (no doubt most parents feel the same about their kid) the parameter or sign of intelligence in modern kids? What are the causes for our children to become impatient, disobedient, beyond our control? Are our children becoming robots or humans with feelings? Who is to be blamed?
Who is responsible?
Parents are partly responsible because gadgets are not everything to our kids. They rob the childhood from our kids. Normal childhood experiences of playing in the mud and with toys, is being deprived to them today. It has adversely affected the modern generation a lot.
The basic question is: who decides whether you are smart or intelligent – people or gadgets? Earlier we were concerned whether we looked smart or handsome. Today the complexity of smart phones dictates or defines our smartness. Isn’t it so? Were we less smart than phones or are smart phones giving values to our worth?
Uncontrolled changes - Paradoxes
Our parents were not rich. But they gave love, not worldly materials. There were no personal concerns. Most concerns were seen as those of the family circle. Today parents give their kids more of gadgets and materials and less of love. We never had cell phones, DVDs, play station, video games, personal computers, internet, chat - but we had real friends. Today we rarely go out of our apartments and homes to visit others. Earlier we listened to our parents. Today parents are forced to listen to their children. We lived well with ‘Limited’ things. We treasured experiences. Today we have too many things, less experiences to be treasured, because we are too busy to meet each other.
Before 1990’s, there was no technology, no internet, no computers, no mobile phones, but the thrill of life existed. We played until evening in the mud; rarely watching TV in our neighbour’s house. Nothing happened to our feet despite roaming barefoot. We played with real friends, meeting, eating and chatting for long hours, not like today’s virtual internet friends of time pass. When we were tired and thirsty, we drank tap water, not bottled water. We rarely fell ill sharing the same glass of juice with our friends. We visited our friends’ homes uninvited and enjoyed food with them. We used to create our own toys and castles in the sand and play with those. Why don’t we find these nowadays?
Our world has become narrow and our gadgets have taken away our freedom. Today orphanages have children of extremely poor parents. But old age homes have parents of extremely rich children. Why?
Conclusion
It is not right to be against technology nor am I against technology. Neither is it right to ask people to go back to the Stone Age! I fully agree that technology makes our lives easier and has become an inseparable part of today's life. But the real question is - How much of Technology should we expose our kids to... and at what age?
Technology and advancement are not bad. But if we become its slaves, they can overpower us and ruin our peace and well-being. Is modernity destroying the fabric of human living? Today we have begun to allow gadgets to defame us. We look up to smart phones, thinking that they make us smart.
What kind of kids do we wish to see in our future? Do we not want our kids to enjoy family time, friends and open to learn and develop their personality? It is human interactions that will define our smartness, not our smart phones.
Have we forgotten that we humans are smarter than all creatures? Let us think smartly and act smart even without our smart phones. Let us expose our kids to moderate technology as much as it helps them to enjoy childhood and not become robots.
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