The Current Biggest Thing (CBT) is in their hand, and from years of personal observations, it is in their hand constantly. Take it away, and the whining begins. Take it to some area where there is no signal, and there will be no peace.
I saw him: a small boy of age 8, with something wedged in his palm. As I began to explain the local biology and history of the area, I adjusted my speech to accommodate his age. The parents appreciated that. However, the child was lost in something else. There was this game on his IPOD that had mesmerized him. He excluded me, his parents, his environment, and all else to stay in the game. Obviously, his friends were also online. It was one of those “multi-user” games.
Finally, dad explained to him in no uncertain tone that there had been an agreement made and that this young man had better be putting-up his iPod or there would be some consequences. The whining began, and then the child simply sat there and shut-up. It was about 8:15 a.m. and he was asleep in ten minutes. He would learn nothing new that day, and throughout a unique and informative and awesome tour of the Grand Canyon he mostly slept.
There was the young lady, about 12 as I judged, who was staying at a hotel in a small town in an area where there was no easily-obtained cell phone signal, let alone a decent digital network. It was part of their vacation. She stared incessantly and irritated at her Android, fussing and fuming like some insolent girl from a ritzy neighborhood. She’d lost her e-link to her friends and her Facebook and her Twitter. Her mom acted no less bratty about it. They’d booked the hotel only to find they were in Oz, and without a decent network, well, this simply couldn’t work. It wouldn’t do. They cancelled their reservations same-day, at 4 p.m. as they checked-in, and cancelled all their tours.
The hotel and tour company were “nice enough” to let them off without charge. I was amazed.
The Grand Canyon wasn’t important. The small town nature and charm of the area was lost to them. The yawning, never ending Arizona skies and landscape and towering thunderheads were invisible to them. The ability to drive to the bottom of the Canyon, to swim in the river, and to see the geology opened and yawning before them was meaningless.
This story can be repeated countless times. I think the reader might now understand.
If you’re a parent who is caught in this situation, you may or may not be aware of the problem. However, one recent tour couple, with their properly-attentive child, said the words that caused this article to gel in my mind: electronically-challenged children.
Electronically-challenged children are a new generation of kids, growing-up in a world where they communicate not with mouths or ears or gestures, but with keystrokes. They hole-up within their own shell and speak to strangers or friends about their lives with pushes of buttons and acronyms. Some of their parents are no less guilty, spending days on-end in Facebook interactive games, or busily texting from the driver’s seat of their vehicle as they fly down I/40 at 75 mph, the legal speed limit in our area of Northern Arizona.
I’ve seen it. I am not lying and I am not exaggerating. I am simply repeating what I have observed time after time.
There is a generation of children, maturing and living in a “Brave New World” where even Aldous Huxley would cringe. This reality exceeds even his visions of apocalyptic society. George Orwell turns in his “1984” grave. Nothing is stranger than reality, and in this case, reality is stark: our kids are in a virtual world which excludes the real world.
The enlightened parents who uttered the words which caused this article to flow shared the same fear: will this next generation of children be able to communicate in a humane, normal, sentient way with their colleagues? Will they be able to read, decide, and govern their lives in a way that is conducive to positive values and moral decency?
We are in the throes of a great experiment, a society-wide experiment, and our children seem to be the guinea pigs.
Now…let us take a trip to the 1960’s and early 1970’s, when many of us “boomers” were molding our characters.
Credit cards were almost unheard-of. ATM machines weren’t even a consideration. Single wage-earning parents created a home-based environment (ideally), and the telephone would ring, leaving the only line to the world tied-up until the conversation ended. Cell phones: no way, of course! It was a TV with crazy shows like “Gilligan’s Island” or “The Red Skelton Show” or “Jackie Gleason” or some new fall SCIFI show like “Star Trek” or “Time Tunnel” or “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”
We played ball (kickball, three flies up) on the lawn at night, right out front. My friends and I were often breathless on a small lawn in the cool of the evening. We played tag or just sat and talked. We’d go to the movie if our parents would just drive us there. We’d enjoy a drive-in movie (explain that one to your kids or grand kids, and they’ll wish they could go, too!), multi-family in the back of gigantic station wagons. We communicated face to face, ear to ear, or even hand-to-hand in arm-wrestling. There were board games (who remembers Green Ghost?) and lots of laughter. We’d try our hand on the piano, and there would be more laughter. Of course, there would also be homework each evening before these festivities began. Curfews weren’t needed; we were exhausted by 10 p.m. (if we could stay-awake that long!).
Many of my readers will remember these days. We remember the simplicity of things, and of learning the news on TV or in a newspaper the next morning, or perhaps much earlier if there was an “extra” that night before that deserved our attention.
Our world has evolved so quickly, and instant communication has enabled us to touch the wisdom of the world with but a few keystrokes. We can research anything instantly, we can say anything and the world can see it instantly. We can interact with beings of every country across the globe in online games and come to understand their struggles and all of our differences and similarities.
But, are we allowing our kids to lose the ability to communicate well and effectively? This article begins and ends on that concept. I must ask: is it wise to give an 8 year old an iPod? Is it wise to expose our youngest to this information, or is it better to allow them to keep things simple. The mind of a pre-teen or young child is rapidly developing, and cognition is but scratching the surface at such young ages.
Lastly, are we, the parents and grandparents, not the models after which our children pattern their own selves? Children copy parental behavior. Let’s keep it simple for the younger ones, please, and let’s start living more in the real world and less in the multi-user game room! (Is there a hidden article here about the ongoing obesity rate in children, suggesting a problem with sedentary lifestyle?!)